I am no Moses
(Marakesh, Morocco 11:08.26.8.2004)
“You don’t necessarily need a guide, but for safety neither men nor women should hike alone at night.”
-- Practical Information: Mt. Sinai, Let’s Go Travel Guide: Egypt
So here I am all alone at 2:15am, lost at the base of Mt. Sinai.
I scan with my flashlight, desperate to find any indication of a foot path. Do those three rocks in a seeming line constitute a proper boundary? There is a slight incline there with hardly any rocks. Could that be the beginning of a heavily traveled trail? How I managed to lose fifty hikers who arrived by minibus more or less at the same time as I did on one of the most touristed mountains in the world is a feat even Moses would be proud of. Sure I can’t turn a rod into a snake and back again but if he had my skills of navigation and evasion, Moses and the Levites would’ve shaken off the pesky Egyptians and reached the promised land of milk and honey in no time. Probably wouldn’t have had to waste precious God favors in splitting the Red Sea.
Two hours before, I was crammed in the back corner of a minibus in Dahab, a budget traveler’s paradise on the Gulf of Aqaba. I first heard about the town on a Luxor-bound bus from Cairo. I sat net to a Pennsylvanian-turned-English student with chronic fatigue syndrome. As she took her painkillers and sleeping pills she said “Dahab isn’t like Cairo” where she had to jog in the morning wearing sweat pants and a shirt, “There you can wear tank tops and shorts. It’s just like southern Europe. I totally miss wearing slutty things.” Then the pills took effect and she fell asleep. Dahab is laid back and cheap. Many travelers end up spending months in the town as diving courses are offered as abundantly as the fresh seafood. After snorkeling or windsurfing, grab some mango juice on the beach and listen to Bob Marley or Sade. Eat kebabs and smoke out of a sheesha later that night before shopping for souvenirs at Cleopatra Rasta Shop. No joke. One of the few landlubber excursions is a nocturnal hike up to Mt. Sinai, timed perfectly to witness the sunrise at the pinnacle. The bus included a couple other Americans, four Slovenian guys, a couple Danes with convincing American accents and also a French contingent. We were assured that it was an easy hike with clear paths. Carrying a map was optional; there’d be so many people there. Just follow the leader.
After two hours the bus arrived at St. Catherine’s, a monastery sitting at the base of the mountain, founded in 300AD and houses what is believed to be a direct descendant of the Burning Bush. As soon as I left the bus, I headed for the bathroom to put on pants and a sweater. The temperature had dropped to 50 degrees. By the time I checked my gear and clothing, there were only a handful of people left at the base.
I am not going to be the last one on to, so I began power walking. This was the mistake. I was in Amazing Race mode, competing with a pack of world class hikers who burst out of the vans and sped up the mountain, leaving a flurry of dust behind them that had already settled by the time I crossed the same area. They had scaled past so many turns up the mountain that I could no longer hear their stampede or see the glow of their flashlights. Moses had a pillar of fire guiding him at night. A sympathetic firefly is all I’m asking for.
I make out the shapes of two camels and three Bedouins. They are presumably headed for the main camel camp, where camels can be hired as an alternative to hiking. The camp would necessarily fall on the main path, so I follow. As I approach them, one of the men seems extremely tall is walking with an unnatural gait that somehow feels threatening. Like the lanky walk of a volatile alcoholic in a parking lot, like the deceptive swaying of a martial artist fighting in the drunken style. Naturally, I try to get closer. I can’t shine my flashlight directly onto the figures, but the moonlight finally reveals that the dangerous man is actually just a very gaunt camel. So I follow the three camels and two Bedouins
We come upon the silhouette of the monastery and I pause to orient myself according to the map I was shown at Dahab which was simple enough to memorize. “There are two trails” the man explained, “both beginning just past these two pillars. The one that turns to the right is the much faster but steeper Steps of Repentance which many choose as the path of descent. Straight past the pillars is the easier but longer Camel Path.” I see the pillars, gain my bearings and also manage to lose sight of the camels and Bedouins. But I can see a faint stationary glow in the distance. That has to be the camp.
I reach the camp by climbing over rocks and entering the side at the opposite end of the official path. I can see dozens of resting camels and I walk gingerly, meandering quietly around them. Their legs are bent twice under their large bodies. They look at me as any groggy, overworked creature would. Wondering what I want, wondering why I’d chosen such a silly entrance, but too tired to help. I smile at them, apologizing for the earlier than normal wake up call. I approach the men who are huddled around the burning lanterns. They are wearing turbans and long, draping gowns. With gestures, I ask for the path and the men point.
The path, now found, is indeed well delineated. I continue to power walk, optimistic that I could still catch the crowd. Even though the path is clear, there is safety in numbers and more importantly, I never underestimate my ability to screw up. Walking in the dark has one very powerful psychological advantage. I never know how much farther. Can’t tell how much higher. Cant fear coming upon a particularly steep section. Because I can only see three steps ahead of me. The hike then becomes less of a protracted battle of literally Biblical proportions and more a sequence of manageable steps.
I stop after a half hour to remove my sweater and to tighten my large fanny pack that had begun to slide down, hampering my stride. I find a flat rock and sit down for a few moments. The moon, while only 1/8 full, is extremely bright. Enough to cast my shadow, enough to leave my flashlight turned off. The moonlight extends through a perfectly clear sky and illuminates the rugged, arid terrain with a faint blueness, bleaching the colors away, transforming a presumably ruddy palette to a desolate monotony. The color of steel. Of the moon itself. Newly visible stars form constellations I have never seen. A group emerges to resemble a near perfect circle, like a studded collar of a devastatingly massive canine. Or that of an even more terrifying suburban punk. I extend my arms and hands skywards, connecting thumbs to forefingers to create a rectangle. I begin counting stars within this frame, each knuckle spanning trillions of miles, eclipsing entire solar systems and worlds within which a similarly predisposed creature was simultaneously counting the stars with me. The universe is of unimaginable bigness and the number of habitable planets still so vast that the possibility of an alien creature mimicking my actions is, I believe, very likely. But my interstellar communion is suddenly interrupted by a flickering army of flashlights. There they are. But they are behind me and below. As I would later find out, everybody had prepped themselves in the courtyard of a small cafe, obstructed from my view by a wall of minivans. I did not lost them. I ran past them. I had been racing no one. I point my light at them. Dot-dash-dot dash-dot-dash dot-dash-dot. A person responds, shining the light in my direction. Here I am, having a Moses moment. I had been utterly convinced of my pathfinding failure and now suddenly find myself in the position of a leader. My flashlight, now a beacon, my stride, now setting the pace. But I have become habituated to the silence and the light. I don’t want a cacophony of footsteps and foreign accents messing the whole thing up. I turn off my light and walk away. Unlike Moses, I leave my people behind. Am I my brother’s keeper?
An hour and a half later I am at the final 350 steps. A Bedouin merchant says it’s too early, nobody’s up there yet. I should take a break, buy some overpriced chips and tea. Halfway up, it seems the Bedouin had a point. I refused to rest throughout the entire way, and now my body is shaking. Moses had a walking stick. My trembling knees could use one right now. But I remind myself that an 80-year old man with slippery sandals walked up this way carrying two stone tablets and then managed to survive for forty days without food or water. I have nothing to complain about. I’m carrying a camera, some cookies and two juice boxes. Hardly a load to warrant divine intervention. So I just keep walking.
I am not the first at the top. Three guys had taken the Steps of Repentance. Three others had camped out from the previous day. Another merchant approaches me, offering to lend me his blanket for a dollar and a half. I ask him where the sun will rise, situate myself near the edge, wrap myself in the blanket, take out a juice box and wait.
For the next ninety minutes, the people pile in. Some are quick to sleep. Others begin eating. Some stargaze.
It beings sometime after 5am. Hard to give an exact minute to an event that is part of a seamless process. A thin white thread appears over the horizon, in competing luminescence with the bright fingernail clipping of the moon, elegant, demure in the company of stars and the faint dusting of the Milky Way galaxy. Somewhere east – is it Saudi Arabia? India? How far could we see? – the white thread quickly breaks open, expanding in a spectrum that leaks orange over the landscape, over everything. And then the rising of a fierce orange disc, which sets the lunar desolation, the silent eloquence of blues on fire. In its unyielding march westward, the disc claims territories under this orange glow, increasing its dominion with every passing moment. In time, those of us on the mountain also submit to its presence and somewhere in Morocco or Spain, it is still dark and quiet.
“The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled....” Exodus 19:18
And to witness a vast beautiful dance between night and day, a process that determines our concept of time but is timeless in itself, giving rhythm to seen and unseen occurrences that repeat over days, years, eons and one which is undoubtedly linked to cosmic forces beyond Hubble’s scope, beyond astrophysical explanation, beyond even the most informed imagination; hinged upon systems in a god-sized mobile, teetering and swaying in delicate balance, measured no longer by human numbers but with words invented to capture the unfathomable: infinite, forever, every-thing. Things as small as rocks and sand and sleepy, hungry people on a mountain top. This is what it feels like to feel the Earth move, to identify ourselves as microscopic – but no less integral – participants to the dance
(Marakesh, Morocco 11:08.26.8.2004)
“You don’t necessarily need a guide, but for safety neither men nor women should hike alone at night.”
-- Practical Information: Mt. Sinai, Let’s Go Travel Guide: Egypt
So here I am all alone at 2:15am, lost at the base of Mt. Sinai.
I scan with my flashlight, desperate to find any indication of a foot path. Do those three rocks in a seeming line constitute a proper boundary? There is a slight incline there with hardly any rocks. Could that be the beginning of a heavily traveled trail? How I managed to lose fifty hikers who arrived by minibus more or less at the same time as I did on one of the most touristed mountains in the world is a feat even Moses would be proud of. Sure I can’t turn a rod into a snake and back again but if he had my skills of navigation and evasion, Moses and the Levites would’ve shaken off the pesky Egyptians and reached the promised land of milk and honey in no time. Probably wouldn’t have had to waste precious God favors in splitting the Red Sea.
Two hours before, I was crammed in the back corner of a minibus in Dahab, a budget traveler’s paradise on the Gulf of Aqaba. I first heard about the town on a Luxor-bound bus from Cairo. I sat net to a Pennsylvanian-turned-English student with chronic fatigue syndrome. As she took her painkillers and sleeping pills she said “Dahab isn’t like Cairo” where she had to jog in the morning wearing sweat pants and a shirt, “There you can wear tank tops and shorts. It’s just like southern Europe. I totally miss wearing slutty things.” Then the pills took effect and she fell asleep. Dahab is laid back and cheap. Many travelers end up spending months in the town as diving courses are offered as abundantly as the fresh seafood. After snorkeling or windsurfing, grab some mango juice on the beach and listen to Bob Marley or Sade. Eat kebabs and smoke out of a sheesha later that night before shopping for souvenirs at Cleopatra Rasta Shop. No joke. One of the few landlubber excursions is a nocturnal hike up to Mt. Sinai, timed perfectly to witness the sunrise at the pinnacle. The bus included a couple other Americans, four Slovenian guys, a couple Danes with convincing American accents and also a French contingent. We were assured that it was an easy hike with clear paths. Carrying a map was optional; there’d be so many people there. Just follow the leader.
After two hours the bus arrived at St. Catherine’s, a monastery sitting at the base of the mountain, founded in 300AD and houses what is believed to be a direct descendant of the Burning Bush. As soon as I left the bus, I headed for the bathroom to put on pants and a sweater. The temperature had dropped to 50 degrees. By the time I checked my gear and clothing, there were only a handful of people left at the base.
I am not going to be the last one on to, so I began power walking. This was the mistake. I was in Amazing Race mode, competing with a pack of world class hikers who burst out of the vans and sped up the mountain, leaving a flurry of dust behind them that had already settled by the time I crossed the same area. They had scaled past so many turns up the mountain that I could no longer hear their stampede or see the glow of their flashlights. Moses had a pillar of fire guiding him at night. A sympathetic firefly is all I’m asking for.
I make out the shapes of two camels and three Bedouins. They are presumably headed for the main camel camp, where camels can be hired as an alternative to hiking. The camp would necessarily fall on the main path, so I follow. As I approach them, one of the men seems extremely tall is walking with an unnatural gait that somehow feels threatening. Like the lanky walk of a volatile alcoholic in a parking lot, like the deceptive swaying of a martial artist fighting in the drunken style. Naturally, I try to get closer. I can’t shine my flashlight directly onto the figures, but the moonlight finally reveals that the dangerous man is actually just a very gaunt camel. So I follow the three camels and two Bedouins
We come upon the silhouette of the monastery and I pause to orient myself according to the map I was shown at Dahab which was simple enough to memorize. “There are two trails” the man explained, “both beginning just past these two pillars. The one that turns to the right is the much faster but steeper Steps of Repentance which many choose as the path of descent. Straight past the pillars is the easier but longer Camel Path.” I see the pillars, gain my bearings and also manage to lose sight of the camels and Bedouins. But I can see a faint stationary glow in the distance. That has to be the camp.
I reach the camp by climbing over rocks and entering the side at the opposite end of the official path. I can see dozens of resting camels and I walk gingerly, meandering quietly around them. Their legs are bent twice under their large bodies. They look at me as any groggy, overworked creature would. Wondering what I want, wondering why I’d chosen such a silly entrance, but too tired to help. I smile at them, apologizing for the earlier than normal wake up call. I approach the men who are huddled around the burning lanterns. They are wearing turbans and long, draping gowns. With gestures, I ask for the path and the men point.
The path, now found, is indeed well delineated. I continue to power walk, optimistic that I could still catch the crowd. Even though the path is clear, there is safety in numbers and more importantly, I never underestimate my ability to screw up. Walking in the dark has one very powerful psychological advantage. I never know how much farther. Can’t tell how much higher. Cant fear coming upon a particularly steep section. Because I can only see three steps ahead of me. The hike then becomes less of a protracted battle of literally Biblical proportions and more a sequence of manageable steps.
I stop after a half hour to remove my sweater and to tighten my large fanny pack that had begun to slide down, hampering my stride. I find a flat rock and sit down for a few moments. The moon, while only 1/8 full, is extremely bright. Enough to cast my shadow, enough to leave my flashlight turned off. The moonlight extends through a perfectly clear sky and illuminates the rugged, arid terrain with a faint blueness, bleaching the colors away, transforming a presumably ruddy palette to a desolate monotony. The color of steel. Of the moon itself. Newly visible stars form constellations I have never seen. A group emerges to resemble a near perfect circle, like a studded collar of a devastatingly massive canine. Or that of an even more terrifying suburban punk. I extend my arms and hands skywards, connecting thumbs to forefingers to create a rectangle. I begin counting stars within this frame, each knuckle spanning trillions of miles, eclipsing entire solar systems and worlds within which a similarly predisposed creature was simultaneously counting the stars with me. The universe is of unimaginable bigness and the number of habitable planets still so vast that the possibility of an alien creature mimicking my actions is, I believe, very likely. But my interstellar communion is suddenly interrupted by a flickering army of flashlights. There they are. But they are behind me and below. As I would later find out, everybody had prepped themselves in the courtyard of a small cafe, obstructed from my view by a wall of minivans. I did not lost them. I ran past them. I had been racing no one. I point my light at them. Dot-dash-dot dash-dot-dash dot-dash-dot. A person responds, shining the light in my direction. Here I am, having a Moses moment. I had been utterly convinced of my pathfinding failure and now suddenly find myself in the position of a leader. My flashlight, now a beacon, my stride, now setting the pace. But I have become habituated to the silence and the light. I don’t want a cacophony of footsteps and foreign accents messing the whole thing up. I turn off my light and walk away. Unlike Moses, I leave my people behind. Am I my brother’s keeper?
An hour and a half later I am at the final 350 steps. A Bedouin merchant says it’s too early, nobody’s up there yet. I should take a break, buy some overpriced chips and tea. Halfway up, it seems the Bedouin had a point. I refused to rest throughout the entire way, and now my body is shaking. Moses had a walking stick. My trembling knees could use one right now. But I remind myself that an 80-year old man with slippery sandals walked up this way carrying two stone tablets and then managed to survive for forty days without food or water. I have nothing to complain about. I’m carrying a camera, some cookies and two juice boxes. Hardly a load to warrant divine intervention. So I just keep walking.
I am not the first at the top. Three guys had taken the Steps of Repentance. Three others had camped out from the previous day. Another merchant approaches me, offering to lend me his blanket for a dollar and a half. I ask him where the sun will rise, situate myself near the edge, wrap myself in the blanket, take out a juice box and wait.
For the next ninety minutes, the people pile in. Some are quick to sleep. Others begin eating. Some stargaze.
It beings sometime after 5am. Hard to give an exact minute to an event that is part of a seamless process. A thin white thread appears over the horizon, in competing luminescence with the bright fingernail clipping of the moon, elegant, demure in the company of stars and the faint dusting of the Milky Way galaxy. Somewhere east – is it Saudi Arabia? India? How far could we see? – the white thread quickly breaks open, expanding in a spectrum that leaks orange over the landscape, over everything. And then the rising of a fierce orange disc, which sets the lunar desolation, the silent eloquence of blues on fire. In its unyielding march westward, the disc claims territories under this orange glow, increasing its dominion with every passing moment. In time, those of us on the mountain also submit to its presence and somewhere in Morocco or Spain, it is still dark and quiet.
“The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled....” Exodus 19:18
And to witness a vast beautiful dance between night and day, a process that determines our concept of time but is timeless in itself, giving rhythm to seen and unseen occurrences that repeat over days, years, eons and one which is undoubtedly linked to cosmic forces beyond Hubble’s scope, beyond astrophysical explanation, beyond even the most informed imagination; hinged upon systems in a god-sized mobile, teetering and swaying in delicate balance, measured no longer by human numbers but with words invented to capture the unfathomable: infinite, forever, every-thing. Things as small as rocks and sand and sleepy, hungry people on a mountain top. This is what it feels like to feel the Earth move, to identify ourselves as microscopic – but no less integral – participants to the dance
The Rat Temple
(Delhi, India 19:52.17.7.2004)
“If I tell people India is dirty or even really dirty, people back home in Holland won’t understand.” A Dutch guy told me. “If I tell them it’s hard to travel or really, really hard to travel, they still won’t know what it’s like.”
I had been more or less awake for forty hours, experiencing varying degrees of sleep deprivation that diminished my alertness and glazed my eyes with zombielike detachment. I began in Dharamsala in northern India, where Tibetan monks sought refuge after Mao Zedong’s communist bulldozer pushed them off of their homeland some sixty years ago. I consulted a monk who took my palm and birthdate and revealed that I was a merman in my previous life, which explains my morbid fascination with the ocean. He then told me I should buy a horse. I went to the Dalai Lama’s house, but nobody answered, so I left.
The first leg of the journey, an overnight bus ride to the capital Delhi featured a woman beautifully draped in a forest green sari. She sat directly in front of me, threw her head out the window and vomited. My window was also open. I will let you connect the dots from her mouth to my arm and face.
Usually I’m able to sleep in buses, able to prop my knees against the seat in front of me, wedge my head between the window and seat and achieve a physically balanced – albeit silly – pose. Once that point is reached, fatigue does the rest and I’m knocked out for hours at a time, waking up only for an occasional security check. A quick pat of my left pant pocket, the permanent home of my wallet. A lift of my small over-the-shoulder day bag assures me its contents haven’t been removed. Carrying this bag everyday in an increasingly widening cleft on my right shoulder has acquainted me deftly with its exact weight. Digital camera plus guide book plus three pens plus mini-flashlight plus bug bite ointment called Monkey Holding White Peach I bought in Koh Phangan equals just this much when lifted.
But tonight I couldn’t sleep. I was waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop, where this vomitter was concerned. Her initial upchuck was substantial, but is wasn’t over. Anyone who’s ever fallen victim to the stomach flu or cheap tequila knows that vomiting is an ordeal that doesn’t end unambiguously. The final surge – whether it is a shallow trickle or a mad surge – always leaves you definitely relieved. No doubt about it. This woman continued to hang her head out the windows, awaiting a reprisal. And so was I. Why not close the window? Suffocating in the heat and aroma of fellow travelers could very well induce me to vomit myself.
After the bus arrived in Delhi at 6am, I hired a rickshaw to take me to the train station. I had no idea when the next train would leave for Jaipur, my next stop. My large backpack, which is about the size of three huddled toddlers, has the same effect on conmen and touts that steak has on Dobermans. It’s an attraction beyond desire or desperation. It’s cosmic law, a universal invariable like magnets of opposing charges on a collision course.
“Where are you going?” asks one.
I don’t answer. My sleepless night on the bus waiting for vomit has dulled me so comprehensively that I walk through the mob unfazed. The woman never did finish her business.
“The ticket office isn’t open.”
I don’t care.
“You can buy a ticket at my office.”
Sure pal, get out of my way.
“Let me give you a billion rupees.”
Whatever.
In the time it took me to find the tourist booking office, roughly three minutes, no less than half-a-dozen men stood in my path and tried to redirect my destination to their ‘office’ or wallet. One of them, as it turned out, did tell the truth. The office was indeed closed and wouldn’t open for another ninety minutes. I was the only one waiting, discounting the poor girl sleeping on the ground just outside the entrance. Anyway, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t so eager to buy a first class seat to Jaipur that she’d camped out the whole night.
A couple arrived. I smiled at them, a welcome-to-the-club smile that probably surfaced like a grimace. They didn’t react. The woman’s frown was so severely arched that it pulled her entire face down to her shoulders. Even her eyebrows were depressed. The man was sweating as if he’d just sprinted three miles wearing polyester and then ordered the wrong dish at an Indian restaurant. They looked wretched. They threw their bags down, collapsed on top of them and refused to speak to anyone or each other for an hour and a half. Looks like they had a worse time getting here than me.
And then a woman came. From her accent, she seemed French. She was given incorrect information or foolishly believed a man on the street and ended up at the wrong station, missing her train. Yet she didn’t seem to mind. Maybe she was also vomited on last night? That wasn’t the reason. She lives in Pakistan, volunteering with Afghan refugees. To her, this was a vacation. Seeing people, especially women, live active, relatively free lives was such a welcomed change from the fundamentalist conservatism of Pakistan, that these minor disasters just bounced off her proudly exposed skin.
“In Pakistan, I’m the only woman not wearing a bourka on the streets,” she said, “that’s if you see any women at all.”
A man came, an American in his late twenties who’d left his job as a programmer for Microsoft. He lived in Seattle but found himself at a crossroads. Was considering maybe moving to San Francisco. Maybe not. As Yann Martel wrote in his introduction to Life of Pi, “…a stint in India will beat the restlessness out of any living creature. “ He arrived just four days ago and had the wide-eyed optimism of a mountain climber who’d decided to climb a peak he didn’t quite realize was Mt. Everest.
“Have you been on a long bus ride yet?” He asked.
“What do you consider long?”
“Over six hours.”
“Yes. I just got off a 12-hour joyride.”
“How are they, in general?”
“Well they’re alright.” I didn’t want to unnecessarily frighten him, even if to make my own adventures seem heroic. “But one bus actually did lean over the edge of a cliff in Himachal Pradesh. I almost died. “
“Oh,” he said. He began flipping through his guidebook.
A Sikh man has come and opened the door to the tourist office, gently nudging away the slumbering girl. I go in, followed by the now disenchanted ex programmer, the only woman in Pakistan not covered head to toe and the couple who, for all anyone knew, had just passed through hell on their way to the New Delhi Railway Station.
Tourist offices are set up in major train stations as air-conditioned havens for travelers who’d had it with conmen and humidity. Inside these offices, travelers are unafraid to speak their native languages or to openly check how much they’ve got left in their wallet. It’s as much a psychological reprieve as it is physical.
Experiencing the ‘real’ India is a noble pursuit, but buying a ticket in the ‘real’ line involves a confusing transaction with a teller who may not speak English. And that’s if you manage not to get pushed out of line. Everybody who comes to India will inevitably experience the ‘real thing’ whether it is being the only foreigner on a bus, or eating with local businessmen or playing a pick-up game of cricket. If there is an easier alternative, why not? Besides, even the hardiest backpacker will never know what it’s like to live in India – even if they’ve begun to drink tap water or figured out how Indians poo without using toilet paper – because of a single mental distinction: Even if it’s in the back of their mind, they know they can leave to go home.
To go home. For the first time in months as I had finally made it on the train from Delhi to Jaipur, I wished for home. I missed the Western interpretation of personal space. I missed driving my car on the freeways. I missed the convenience of eating, the availability of sashimi, carne asada burritos and bul go gui within a twenty minute drive. The juice of a medium-rare steak and a waitress whose fingers weren’t dipped in the food I was about to stuff in my face. I missed the stress-free environment of fixed price retailers, buying things without haggling, without resorting to a negotiations showdown for a bottle of Aquafina. I missed the absence of odors. I missed bathrooms and electricity that won’t die in the middle of nighttime showers.
“I’ve been through India,” a French guy told me outside a bar in Nha Trang, a beach town in central Vietnam. “They say if you can travel India, you can travel anywhere in the world.”
I find that statement a bit conservative. I’m convinced a space bound shuttle with a quickly vanishing oxygen supply would involve less trauma. Chances are, a small boy won’t be on board to beg for money. “Houston, we have a problem. The boy says he wants rupees.” The boy wipes the ground as he passes through the cabins. He has stopped in front of my feet and is scratching my shin, which has the effect of stretching thin my patience and compassion. As a matter of personal constitution, I never give beggars money. As this boy stares into my still zombied eyeballs, trying to impart guilt or a sense of humanitarian duty, I quickly fear I’ve become calloused to the needs of the less fortunate. Before I came to India, I always thought poverty was the result of an unborn baby choosing the short straw. It was a matter of chance, that’s all. Equally, it was a matter of luck that I happened to slide down my mother’s birth canal. I could easily be this boy on the ground. There’s nothing that separates me from him, us from them, but a bit of prenatal luck. But how soon this boy forgets that I had already given him my one and only piece of food – a half-melted Snickers bar – on his last go-round.
At the tourist office, I was told the ride from Delhi to Jaipur was a painless one. Quick and easy. You don’t need first class, the man said. Save yourself some money. Seemed sensible. Only five hours away anyway. Here’s some bite-sized facts I picked up from an issue of India Today. The Indian Railway operates the largest transportation system in the world; is the single largest employer, with 1,500,000 workers; serves 4.5 billion travelers each year; and runs 9000 passenger trains out of 7000 stations everyday on a network of tracks that stretch 63,000 kms. Here’s some bite-sized opinions: The trains are excruciatingly slow and reliably late. I was once six hours late on a ride that was supposed to take four hours. Even if you consult a recent Trains at a Glance and it lists a ride from Delhi to Jaipur to take no more than five hours, don’t believe it. Faith has no business in the transportation system. Being immersed in Indian mass transit quickly makes an agonistic out of the even the most hopeful or naïve traveler: You will get there when you get there.
And what was it for? Dharamsala to Delhi to Jaipur to Bikaner to a small town in the desert? All of these commuting debacles.
Rats.
Rats?
Rats.
It’s an event so deeply entrenched in my memory that it seems dreamlike, but when I saw a National Geographic program profiling the rat temple, I promised myself I’d go there one day. I suppose it isn’t the expected reaction from a 9-year-old who’d otherwise preoccupied himself with rocky road ice cream and the Jetsons. And yet a Hindu temple Westerners and health inspectors would deem infested intrigued me as a cultural freakishness so different and beyond my suburban concept of right and wrong that it seemed otherworldly, exotic in it’s truest sense. After spending some time in India, I know better. India is indeed another planet. Its diversity is unmatched and its uniqueness could easily justify India having not only its own continent, but its own orbital plane.
Perhaps the rat temple is the perfect symbol of this, as the Eiffel Tower marks French innovation or the Colosseum reminds us of Roman largesse, or the Great Wall of Chinese industriousness and xenophobia. The rat temple symbolizes Indian insanity. What self-respecting civilization devotes a fraction of its culture to carriers of The Plague? Only crazy Indians.
I had planned to wear long pants tucked inside tube socks that were strangled tight by big black boots. I imagined rats smelling a foreign, delicious body, assembling themselves in small legions that would corner me from all sides, including the ceiling, and mount my body. The tiny panicked scratches as they crawled up my legs. The excited high-pitched squeals as they smelled the grease off my fingers. Rats coming down from the roof as they dived on my head and encircled my neck as a tightening, furry leash. Their frayed tails whipping and tickling the corners of my lips. And then the brave ones jumping for my ear lobes, sticking their officious snouts inside. The sudden loud sound of moist squirming as if I’d been pushed into a pool of saliva.
You can come wearing a chain-link suit or a fireman’s coat, but know this: No shoes allowed.
As I enter the temple a man has yelled for my attention and motioned for me to prepare my camera. In one smooth movement he dunks his head in a vat of milk, where several rats are lounging, and takes a few festive gulps. Some rats are drinking the same milk, though with less fanfare. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite get the picture. Graciously the man grants an encore. In a country whose roads display billboards about AIDS prevention (two men shooting up with needles and a two-way arrow between them; the silhouetted profile of a pregnant woman with an arrow pointing to the fetus) it’s incredible that the sharing of bodily liquids between man and rat isn’t an issue taken up by the surgeon general. I’m told later though that while The Plague has affected parts of Rajasthan, the state in which this temple sits, these rats, inexplicably seem immune to it and haven’t passed it to any humans. There are also no reports of rat-cat violence. Magical animals indeed.
The inner temple is forbidden to non Hindus, so while the guide/jeep driver I hired to take me from Bikaner through the desert paid his respects, I explored the corridors of the complex.
The first thing I noticed is an undeniable laissez faire with which these rats seemed to live. They know this is their hood. They know nothing about the constant state of paranoia and scurrying of their urban cousins, the ones behind refrigerators, in a perennial struggle against mouse traps and cats. What these temple rats resemble are elderly folks in the South, sprawled on balconies, sipping lemonade, talking about the heat of a summer that might never end. Few things – maybe a call from a grandchild or the oven timer going off – could shake their resolve to stay put.
These rats clump together in corners and around holes in the walls. Even when I get close, they do not react. In fact, some were completely still. It was the first time I’d seen a sleeping rodent. I wondered if these ones were dead. But no sooner that this thought came did I spot one covered with ants. So that’s what a dead one looks like, in case you’re confused about whether you should step quietly around one or stop and pray for its salvation.
Behind the forbidden inner sanctum is a small u-shaped passageway completely devoid of light. I had made it through, up to the first turn of the hall when I realized that this is where the majority of the rats were. There were hundred on the floor, yet I could still see the path of the tiles. If I stepped on one, would its first impulse be to run away or bite? And if one attacked, would it then signal the intruder alert and trigger an all out offensive? As I considered the instinctive predisposition of the rat – fight or flight – I stood still and heard the voice of JFK. “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” He may have been talking about the Soviets or space exploration but generations and several thousand miles away, he spoke to me, as he does often when I find myself in these fixes. He makes up my mind: The onset of fear becomes a greater source of concern than an army of rats.
So I walked nervously, my shoulders raised up to shield my neck. I slide my way through. I took off my shoes and decided that these socks were not coming back to America, or even the jeep. I witnessed varying shapes of grays and blacks shift around me. Each time I stepped on a branch or an abandoned flip flop, I was startled into a girlish panic. It raised the hair on my neck and made me jump. I would’ve been able to jump on a table or compete in the high jump, but temple corridors are hardly the setting for fine dining furniture or regulation Olympic apparatus. But I was beyond the point of embarrassment, even as I made it through the dark passageway and into the daylight.
I continued to be startled by stray rocks and hard pigeon poop. And I tried to play it off by darting off to the side to review pictures I’d taken just two minutes ago. The local worshippers were amused but sympathetic, but more than that, I knew the rats had seen and were probably laughing at me. “Did you see that Japanese guy just jump up and squeal like a girl? These tourists are so squeamish.” And then they’d sit back again, relax in the still, humid air and watch the day pass.
(Delhi, India 19:52.17.7.2004)
“If I tell people India is dirty or even really dirty, people back home in Holland won’t understand.” A Dutch guy told me. “If I tell them it’s hard to travel or really, really hard to travel, they still won’t know what it’s like.”
I had been more or less awake for forty hours, experiencing varying degrees of sleep deprivation that diminished my alertness and glazed my eyes with zombielike detachment. I began in Dharamsala in northern India, where Tibetan monks sought refuge after Mao Zedong’s communist bulldozer pushed them off of their homeland some sixty years ago. I consulted a monk who took my palm and birthdate and revealed that I was a merman in my previous life, which explains my morbid fascination with the ocean. He then told me I should buy a horse. I went to the Dalai Lama’s house, but nobody answered, so I left.
The first leg of the journey, an overnight bus ride to the capital Delhi featured a woman beautifully draped in a forest green sari. She sat directly in front of me, threw her head out the window and vomited. My window was also open. I will let you connect the dots from her mouth to my arm and face.
Usually I’m able to sleep in buses, able to prop my knees against the seat in front of me, wedge my head between the window and seat and achieve a physically balanced – albeit silly – pose. Once that point is reached, fatigue does the rest and I’m knocked out for hours at a time, waking up only for an occasional security check. A quick pat of my left pant pocket, the permanent home of my wallet. A lift of my small over-the-shoulder day bag assures me its contents haven’t been removed. Carrying this bag everyday in an increasingly widening cleft on my right shoulder has acquainted me deftly with its exact weight. Digital camera plus guide book plus three pens plus mini-flashlight plus bug bite ointment called Monkey Holding White Peach I bought in Koh Phangan equals just this much when lifted.
But tonight I couldn’t sleep. I was waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop, where this vomitter was concerned. Her initial upchuck was substantial, but is wasn’t over. Anyone who’s ever fallen victim to the stomach flu or cheap tequila knows that vomiting is an ordeal that doesn’t end unambiguously. The final surge – whether it is a shallow trickle or a mad surge – always leaves you definitely relieved. No doubt about it. This woman continued to hang her head out the windows, awaiting a reprisal. And so was I. Why not close the window? Suffocating in the heat and aroma of fellow travelers could very well induce me to vomit myself.
After the bus arrived in Delhi at 6am, I hired a rickshaw to take me to the train station. I had no idea when the next train would leave for Jaipur, my next stop. My large backpack, which is about the size of three huddled toddlers, has the same effect on conmen and touts that steak has on Dobermans. It’s an attraction beyond desire or desperation. It’s cosmic law, a universal invariable like magnets of opposing charges on a collision course.
“Where are you going?” asks one.
I don’t answer. My sleepless night on the bus waiting for vomit has dulled me so comprehensively that I walk through the mob unfazed. The woman never did finish her business.
“The ticket office isn’t open.”
I don’t care.
“You can buy a ticket at my office.”
Sure pal, get out of my way.
“Let me give you a billion rupees.”
Whatever.
In the time it took me to find the tourist booking office, roughly three minutes, no less than half-a-dozen men stood in my path and tried to redirect my destination to their ‘office’ or wallet. One of them, as it turned out, did tell the truth. The office was indeed closed and wouldn’t open for another ninety minutes. I was the only one waiting, discounting the poor girl sleeping on the ground just outside the entrance. Anyway, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t so eager to buy a first class seat to Jaipur that she’d camped out the whole night.
A couple arrived. I smiled at them, a welcome-to-the-club smile that probably surfaced like a grimace. They didn’t react. The woman’s frown was so severely arched that it pulled her entire face down to her shoulders. Even her eyebrows were depressed. The man was sweating as if he’d just sprinted three miles wearing polyester and then ordered the wrong dish at an Indian restaurant. They looked wretched. They threw their bags down, collapsed on top of them and refused to speak to anyone or each other for an hour and a half. Looks like they had a worse time getting here than me.
And then a woman came. From her accent, she seemed French. She was given incorrect information or foolishly believed a man on the street and ended up at the wrong station, missing her train. Yet she didn’t seem to mind. Maybe she was also vomited on last night? That wasn’t the reason. She lives in Pakistan, volunteering with Afghan refugees. To her, this was a vacation. Seeing people, especially women, live active, relatively free lives was such a welcomed change from the fundamentalist conservatism of Pakistan, that these minor disasters just bounced off her proudly exposed skin.
“In Pakistan, I’m the only woman not wearing a bourka on the streets,” she said, “that’s if you see any women at all.”
A man came, an American in his late twenties who’d left his job as a programmer for Microsoft. He lived in Seattle but found himself at a crossroads. Was considering maybe moving to San Francisco. Maybe not. As Yann Martel wrote in his introduction to Life of Pi, “…a stint in India will beat the restlessness out of any living creature. “ He arrived just four days ago and had the wide-eyed optimism of a mountain climber who’d decided to climb a peak he didn’t quite realize was Mt. Everest.
“Have you been on a long bus ride yet?” He asked.
“What do you consider long?”
“Over six hours.”
“Yes. I just got off a 12-hour joyride.”
“How are they, in general?”
“Well they’re alright.” I didn’t want to unnecessarily frighten him, even if to make my own adventures seem heroic. “But one bus actually did lean over the edge of a cliff in Himachal Pradesh. I almost died. “
“Oh,” he said. He began flipping through his guidebook.
A Sikh man has come and opened the door to the tourist office, gently nudging away the slumbering girl. I go in, followed by the now disenchanted ex programmer, the only woman in Pakistan not covered head to toe and the couple who, for all anyone knew, had just passed through hell on their way to the New Delhi Railway Station.
Tourist offices are set up in major train stations as air-conditioned havens for travelers who’d had it with conmen and humidity. Inside these offices, travelers are unafraid to speak their native languages or to openly check how much they’ve got left in their wallet. It’s as much a psychological reprieve as it is physical.
Experiencing the ‘real’ India is a noble pursuit, but buying a ticket in the ‘real’ line involves a confusing transaction with a teller who may not speak English. And that’s if you manage not to get pushed out of line. Everybody who comes to India will inevitably experience the ‘real thing’ whether it is being the only foreigner on a bus, or eating with local businessmen or playing a pick-up game of cricket. If there is an easier alternative, why not? Besides, even the hardiest backpacker will never know what it’s like to live in India – even if they’ve begun to drink tap water or figured out how Indians poo without using toilet paper – because of a single mental distinction: Even if it’s in the back of their mind, they know they can leave to go home.
To go home. For the first time in months as I had finally made it on the train from Delhi to Jaipur, I wished for home. I missed the Western interpretation of personal space. I missed driving my car on the freeways. I missed the convenience of eating, the availability of sashimi, carne asada burritos and bul go gui within a twenty minute drive. The juice of a medium-rare steak and a waitress whose fingers weren’t dipped in the food I was about to stuff in my face. I missed the stress-free environment of fixed price retailers, buying things without haggling, without resorting to a negotiations showdown for a bottle of Aquafina. I missed the absence of odors. I missed bathrooms and electricity that won’t die in the middle of nighttime showers.
“I’ve been through India,” a French guy told me outside a bar in Nha Trang, a beach town in central Vietnam. “They say if you can travel India, you can travel anywhere in the world.”
I find that statement a bit conservative. I’m convinced a space bound shuttle with a quickly vanishing oxygen supply would involve less trauma. Chances are, a small boy won’t be on board to beg for money. “Houston, we have a problem. The boy says he wants rupees.” The boy wipes the ground as he passes through the cabins. He has stopped in front of my feet and is scratching my shin, which has the effect of stretching thin my patience and compassion. As a matter of personal constitution, I never give beggars money. As this boy stares into my still zombied eyeballs, trying to impart guilt or a sense of humanitarian duty, I quickly fear I’ve become calloused to the needs of the less fortunate. Before I came to India, I always thought poverty was the result of an unborn baby choosing the short straw. It was a matter of chance, that’s all. Equally, it was a matter of luck that I happened to slide down my mother’s birth canal. I could easily be this boy on the ground. There’s nothing that separates me from him, us from them, but a bit of prenatal luck. But how soon this boy forgets that I had already given him my one and only piece of food – a half-melted Snickers bar – on his last go-round.
At the tourist office, I was told the ride from Delhi to Jaipur was a painless one. Quick and easy. You don’t need first class, the man said. Save yourself some money. Seemed sensible. Only five hours away anyway. Here’s some bite-sized facts I picked up from an issue of India Today. The Indian Railway operates the largest transportation system in the world; is the single largest employer, with 1,500,000 workers; serves 4.5 billion travelers each year; and runs 9000 passenger trains out of 7000 stations everyday on a network of tracks that stretch 63,000 kms. Here’s some bite-sized opinions: The trains are excruciatingly slow and reliably late. I was once six hours late on a ride that was supposed to take four hours. Even if you consult a recent Trains at a Glance and it lists a ride from Delhi to Jaipur to take no more than five hours, don’t believe it. Faith has no business in the transportation system. Being immersed in Indian mass transit quickly makes an agonistic out of the even the most hopeful or naïve traveler: You will get there when you get there.
And what was it for? Dharamsala to Delhi to Jaipur to Bikaner to a small town in the desert? All of these commuting debacles.
Rats.
Rats?
Rats.
It’s an event so deeply entrenched in my memory that it seems dreamlike, but when I saw a National Geographic program profiling the rat temple, I promised myself I’d go there one day. I suppose it isn’t the expected reaction from a 9-year-old who’d otherwise preoccupied himself with rocky road ice cream and the Jetsons. And yet a Hindu temple Westerners and health inspectors would deem infested intrigued me as a cultural freakishness so different and beyond my suburban concept of right and wrong that it seemed otherworldly, exotic in it’s truest sense. After spending some time in India, I know better. India is indeed another planet. Its diversity is unmatched and its uniqueness could easily justify India having not only its own continent, but its own orbital plane.
Perhaps the rat temple is the perfect symbol of this, as the Eiffel Tower marks French innovation or the Colosseum reminds us of Roman largesse, or the Great Wall of Chinese industriousness and xenophobia. The rat temple symbolizes Indian insanity. What self-respecting civilization devotes a fraction of its culture to carriers of The Plague? Only crazy Indians.
I had planned to wear long pants tucked inside tube socks that were strangled tight by big black boots. I imagined rats smelling a foreign, delicious body, assembling themselves in small legions that would corner me from all sides, including the ceiling, and mount my body. The tiny panicked scratches as they crawled up my legs. The excited high-pitched squeals as they smelled the grease off my fingers. Rats coming down from the roof as they dived on my head and encircled my neck as a tightening, furry leash. Their frayed tails whipping and tickling the corners of my lips. And then the brave ones jumping for my ear lobes, sticking their officious snouts inside. The sudden loud sound of moist squirming as if I’d been pushed into a pool of saliva.
You can come wearing a chain-link suit or a fireman’s coat, but know this: No shoes allowed.
As I enter the temple a man has yelled for my attention and motioned for me to prepare my camera. In one smooth movement he dunks his head in a vat of milk, where several rats are lounging, and takes a few festive gulps. Some rats are drinking the same milk, though with less fanfare. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite get the picture. Graciously the man grants an encore. In a country whose roads display billboards about AIDS prevention (two men shooting up with needles and a two-way arrow between them; the silhouetted profile of a pregnant woman with an arrow pointing to the fetus) it’s incredible that the sharing of bodily liquids between man and rat isn’t an issue taken up by the surgeon general. I’m told later though that while The Plague has affected parts of Rajasthan, the state in which this temple sits, these rats, inexplicably seem immune to it and haven’t passed it to any humans. There are also no reports of rat-cat violence. Magical animals indeed.
The inner temple is forbidden to non Hindus, so while the guide/jeep driver I hired to take me from Bikaner through the desert paid his respects, I explored the corridors of the complex.
The first thing I noticed is an undeniable laissez faire with which these rats seemed to live. They know this is their hood. They know nothing about the constant state of paranoia and scurrying of their urban cousins, the ones behind refrigerators, in a perennial struggle against mouse traps and cats. What these temple rats resemble are elderly folks in the South, sprawled on balconies, sipping lemonade, talking about the heat of a summer that might never end. Few things – maybe a call from a grandchild or the oven timer going off – could shake their resolve to stay put.
These rats clump together in corners and around holes in the walls. Even when I get close, they do not react. In fact, some were completely still. It was the first time I’d seen a sleeping rodent. I wondered if these ones were dead. But no sooner that this thought came did I spot one covered with ants. So that’s what a dead one looks like, in case you’re confused about whether you should step quietly around one or stop and pray for its salvation.
Behind the forbidden inner sanctum is a small u-shaped passageway completely devoid of light. I had made it through, up to the first turn of the hall when I realized that this is where the majority of the rats were. There were hundred on the floor, yet I could still see the path of the tiles. If I stepped on one, would its first impulse be to run away or bite? And if one attacked, would it then signal the intruder alert and trigger an all out offensive? As I considered the instinctive predisposition of the rat – fight or flight – I stood still and heard the voice of JFK. “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” He may have been talking about the Soviets or space exploration but generations and several thousand miles away, he spoke to me, as he does often when I find myself in these fixes. He makes up my mind: The onset of fear becomes a greater source of concern than an army of rats.
So I walked nervously, my shoulders raised up to shield my neck. I slide my way through. I took off my shoes and decided that these socks were not coming back to America, or even the jeep. I witnessed varying shapes of grays and blacks shift around me. Each time I stepped on a branch or an abandoned flip flop, I was startled into a girlish panic. It raised the hair on my neck and made me jump. I would’ve been able to jump on a table or compete in the high jump, but temple corridors are hardly the setting for fine dining furniture or regulation Olympic apparatus. But I was beyond the point of embarrassment, even as I made it through the dark passageway and into the daylight.
I continued to be startled by stray rocks and hard pigeon poop. And I tried to play it off by darting off to the side to review pictures I’d taken just two minutes ago. The local worshippers were amused but sympathetic, but more than that, I knew the rats had seen and were probably laughing at me. “Did you see that Japanese guy just jump up and squeal like a girl? These tourists are so squeamish.” And then they’d sit back again, relax in the still, humid air and watch the day pass.
4-Day All Title Bout: Me vs. Indian Himalayas.
(Manali, India 18:53.28.6.2004)
Day 4: I thought it was over. I thought crossing the icy patch was it. I thought playing cards with the guys meant I was home safe. I thought it was over.
I don’t have the breath for a proper final scream. I had always hoped that a jackal’s instincts would rip through my skin in a life-death situation, tear through the vital threat and deliver me to safety. Instead, it’s with a meek gasp that I quickly utter expletives, names of saints, prophets and superheroes. The bus has skidded on an icy hairpin turn and is tipping over the edge of a cliff. Literally, physically, actually. Instinctively, people shift themselves to the left side of the bus. Failure to correct the imbalance means a vertical drop of a few thousand feet. Should I hop out of the rear exit before impact? Is landing on boulders a better way to die than being mangled in a metallic wreck? Should I roll into a ball? If we all concentrated harder than we ever had and wished for the bus to sprout wings would it happen? If this bus were full of tomatoes instead of local shepherds and farmers, would the spaghetti sauce cushion me to survive? No officers, it’s not blood, it’s Ragu.
In the shadows of the Himalayas, I am on some of the highest roads and passes in the world. I am trying to survive a four-day trek in the mountains. I am only in minute 10 of a 4.5 hour journey back to town when I remind myself that this was the safe alternative.
Traveling to the mountains of northern India during the summer is like the first gulp of ICEE on a grueling drive to Las Vegas with no A/C. It’s manna. The stomach pains, headaches, chaotic transportation and absolute lack of order in central India are foils to the calmness of the mountains, proving that contrast is key to appreciating most things. The gluttonous neon explosion of Las Vegas amid vast desolation. The heights of Himachal Pradesh, rising from the heat.
The massiveness of these mountains can be described in conventional terms. But when you stare up towards the peaks that disappear into the clouds, you’re no longer concerned with meters. Ahh, the sublime consequence of one land mass violently pushing itself into another. The majesty of plate tectonics. One tiny flinch of these mountains can erase a town, can flatten cultures and memories into an indiscernible parenthesis in its own history. The earth moves itself, wholly uninterested with the success of the human legacy.
For days I stared at these mountains from the balcony of Dragon Guest House in Old Manali, taking photos from a safe distance, separated by towns, roads and an apple orchard directly below my room. But there is a difference between idly witnessing the reign of the mountains, and climbing up the throne. To appreciate them, fully, you have to crawl for it. Work for it.
For four days I did, despite initial resistance. I am not feeling strong and my lungs, at these altitudes, resemble – in dimension and efficacy – small deflated balloons. But the alternative was to enjoy the Himalayas via a bus trip farther north to Kashmir, dangerously close to the Pakistani border. Last week, terrorists blew up a tourist bus, killing 40. Days later, a bus flew off a cliff. There is a blatant lack of regulations in India. Transportation is generally uncomfortable and off-schedule but is also, occasionally, life threatening. Activities inherently adventurous, therefore, border on the suicidal. I asked about a paragliding course. The man said, “Well the good news is nobody has died…this year.” So I crossed that off. A four-day trek involved few risks, I thought.
Day 2: The temperature is close to 40 degrees. There is not a single part of my body that is not drenched. How many people can fit in a 3-man tent? Eleven. I am squatting Vietnamese style in one corner, staring into the hems and pant cuffs of fellow trekkers, wondering if their feet are as blistered and frozen as mine. I am in this position for an hour and can no longer feel my legs.
The clouds came up fast during lunch and we had to duck under a boulder, eating boiled eggs and tomato sandwiches until the drenching stopped. It let up just long enough to fool us into thinking we could reach campsite. Grey clouds move quickly, predatorily and one hour later, I am ducking under another boulder. The terrain is flat, though, suitable for a makeshift campsite. But the porters carrying the tents are lost. It is their first time on this trail. Fortunately, another trekking group has joined us and quickly pitch a 3-man tent.
We wait inside.
The other group’s equipment arrives on ponyback. They put up their tents, dig canals around the perimeters to curtail flooding, dive inside and change to dry clothing.
Our porters are still lost.
The guide and cook of the other group invite us to their tent. They pour kerosene in a metal tank, pressurize it, throw a match on the burner and I watch the fire in awe, as if this guide in a pastel beanie with fringes and soaked jeans were Prometheus himself. It is 5,000 years ago, I’m gnawing on a deer leg, icicles forming on my hair and on the tip of my extremely large nose. The guy in front of me strikes the flint stone. The first spark. The first fire. It is the single most important moment in human civilization. Tomorrow, we domesticate animals.
I remove my Ecco boots (which I proudly endorse for their comfort, durability and value) and put my feet across the burner. If I have on piece of dry clothing tomorrow, I will be happy. If I do not freeze to death tonight, I will be happy. If these porters find their way, I will be happy. While my standard of living plummets, the cook and the guide of this other group has boiled water and offers me tea and cookies. My hands and feet warm, regaining their color and senses.
Day 3: From a coach’s “come on legs, you can do it” to the Buddhist “this too, will pass” to the visceral “we will feast on chicken tikka masala when we return to town” to the march from Selma to Washington D.C.’s “we shall overcome” I try every psychological approach to survive. I recall a Eurodance hit to inspire rhythm in my step. I scream. I insult the mountains. Everything helps. Nothing helps. Every tenth step is my last. My tiny deflated balloon lungs are bursting at their seams. I breathe as a yogi, slowly through my nose. The image of a tennis coach flashes. “Jose, what level are you? Slow your breathing. You’re not ready until you’re above level 5.” Coach, I’m off the charts, I’m in the negative. And by the way, I’m still having problems with my forehand volley. I gasp wildly through my mouth as if I’d been thrown on board a ship, having nearly drowned.
It is the last stretch of a 7,600 ft climb. Almost there. Almost there. Hampta Pass is glazed with ice and each step slides back a few inches. Not enough to impede progress, but plenty to demoralize. My biggest fear is sliding all the way down. It’s not about crashing into rocks, but having to reset all of my mind tricks to get me up here again. So I crawl, putting my hands on ice, digging into pony, sheep and goat feces.
The celebration at the apex of Hampta Pass, elevation 13,530 ft., is short lived. The rain clouds are here and we are hit with pea-sized hail. Better than rain, I suppose, smiling, laughing. It’s the lack of oxygen and the assurance from the guide that it’s all downhill from here that makes me hysterical. I’m chomping on a chapatti (think soft taco shell). I can’t feel my fingers. I wiped them on a clump of grass and deemed them clean enough to partake of this feast. I’m coughing up phlegm and snot. It’s the best worst day of my life.
And what a short life it would’ve been. On the rocky descent, I take my sweet time. When will I next be in a valley cut by glaciers? When will I ever see mountains like these? I take photos, throw rocks off cliffs. I pretend I’m a goat, hopping from rock to rock, until my knees rebel. Everybody’s made it down to the valley but me and a Dutch guy. I’m physically retarded; his waterproof shoes broke and has had to manage with slippery sandals.
And then they are screaming. Everybody in the valley, hundreds of feet away. The distance muffles their greeting. The guide is waving frantically with his arms. Alright guys, hi. I’ll be there soon. And then it came. First one rock. And then a couple. And then the thunderous sound of my heart in full panic. Rocks spinning in the air, hurling themselves straight down and then to the right and then to the left. The paths of these large rocks are unpredictable and their speed makes each one – even a tiny pebble – life threatening. One good hit on the noggin will do it. I freeze for a fraction of a moment. Panic requires just an instance to engage, I found out. I run through mud, and poo and over rocks to take cover beneath large boulder.
Better a rock avalanche than a snow avalanche, I thought. In the midst of raining rocks, I’m eager to draw the silver lining. The large boulder is steady, firm. It would take a lot to tumble it onto me. We can wait this out. Almost there. If I make it to my tent tonight, I will be happy. I if I make it drenched, numb and hungry, I will be happy. I fantasize about Day 2.
Day 4: It’s still early in the morning. The sun – which I now worship as a good pagan boy would -- hasn’t entered the valley. With the wind it is below freezing. And yet, I take off my boots. I take off my socks. I roll up my shorts as high as they’ll go. I take deep breaths and enter the river.
We form a chain. I hold the guide’s forearm. The Dutch guy with the sandals (which he doesn’t bother to remove) grabs mine. The water is from the glacier at one end of Spiti Valley. It is colder than any chunk of ice you’ve ever had on your tongue. It is more painful than any ice cream induced brain freeze that’s ever made you cringe. It is like one billion thorns of ice clamping down on your legs, squeezing the blood still. My toes jam into rocks, but I can’t feel them. I cannot feel my feet. The boulders turn into pebbles. The raging current slows to a passive flow. We’ve reached the other side. And we scream.
The guide takes out a towel and beings to dry himself. The Dutch Guy with the sandals has fled and is running down the valley. I’m in disbelief. I poke my calves and feet and toes and am amazed that I can’t feel them. This is how protohumans must have anesthetized themselves. The guide throws me the towel. I put my socks on but cannot feel my toes. I don’t know if one toe is being bent backwards or if one has broken. But we have to go. There is a 9:30 bus to catch.
Almost there, Jose, almost there.
[The following description details five minutes of the worst decision I have ever made. I should’ve said something, but I didn’t. I shouldn’t have done it.]
I have recovered sensation in my feet and we are only thirty minutes from the bus stop. We’ve reached a thirty-foot span of ice that slopes 40 degrees directly into a river that is about 50 feet wide. It is raging with freezing, muddy waters. The surface of the ice is smooth. There is nothing between the ice and the river but a ten-foot drop. I see some dirt patches on the ice and I’m convinced the other group has made it across. Later, I’d find out they hadn’t. They recognized the danger and opted to rock climb above and across the ice.
We form a human chain again. This time, the Dutch guy with the sandals is in the middle. Jam your feet sideways, says the guide. Walk slowly, securely. Each step is a risk I’m unwilling to repeat. There are things worth a bit of danger. Crossing this patch of ice is not one of them. I‘m holding the forearm of the Dutch guy with my right hand. I’m crouched down, stepping slowly, using my left hand to claw into the ice. One slip of one foot of one of us would’ve triggered a disastrous, irreversible chain reaction. Two people couldn’t support the weight of the fallen third. Maybe on firm footing. But not on ice, not with the precarious toehold we were all relying on. Not if we willed it to happen. Gravity will always win. One step. I do not look forward, behind or below. I’m staring at the contours of my boot, the microscopic indentations in the snow. We move one step at a time.
I fantasize about Day 3, about Day 2. If I do not die, well, I’ll be alive and that’s all I’m asking for.
We made it to the bus stop in time, but the bus was full and we spent the next four hours playing cards and trying to keep warm.
The game is Cheaters and this is how it goes. Objective is to get rid of all the cards, which have been equally distributed between me, the Dutch guy with the sandals, the guide, the other group’s guide who fed me tea and cookies two nights before and a man who owns a 4x4. The group that had always been ahead of us hopped onto another bus to another part of the mountains.
I throw two cards on the table, faced down. I say I’ve put down two queens. Next player says he’s putting down one queen. The next says he’s putting down another. The next says he’s putting down another two queens. Who’s lying? If you suspect a player of cheating, you can turn over the cards. If your suspicion proves baseless, then you pick up the stack. If you are correct, though, and sniff out a liar, then he picks up the stack and you determine the value of the next card played.
To say that I’m horrible at the game is a colossal understatement. In my prolific career of deception, it is in these trivial situations that I find lying uncomfortable. I am also psychologically desperate to find cause for levity. In a four day stretch of fearing for your life, you’d be surprised at how the most mundane things can disarm you, can bust your side in unjustified laughter, can bring you to tears, falling over chairs, thanking good god you’re alive to be the ultimate loser for three straight rounds. This, today, is the best worst day of my life.
(Manali, India 18:53.28.6.2004)
Day 4: I thought it was over. I thought crossing the icy patch was it. I thought playing cards with the guys meant I was home safe. I thought it was over.
I don’t have the breath for a proper final scream. I had always hoped that a jackal’s instincts would rip through my skin in a life-death situation, tear through the vital threat and deliver me to safety. Instead, it’s with a meek gasp that I quickly utter expletives, names of saints, prophets and superheroes. The bus has skidded on an icy hairpin turn and is tipping over the edge of a cliff. Literally, physically, actually. Instinctively, people shift themselves to the left side of the bus. Failure to correct the imbalance means a vertical drop of a few thousand feet. Should I hop out of the rear exit before impact? Is landing on boulders a better way to die than being mangled in a metallic wreck? Should I roll into a ball? If we all concentrated harder than we ever had and wished for the bus to sprout wings would it happen? If this bus were full of tomatoes instead of local shepherds and farmers, would the spaghetti sauce cushion me to survive? No officers, it’s not blood, it’s Ragu.
In the shadows of the Himalayas, I am on some of the highest roads and passes in the world. I am trying to survive a four-day trek in the mountains. I am only in minute 10 of a 4.5 hour journey back to town when I remind myself that this was the safe alternative.
Traveling to the mountains of northern India during the summer is like the first gulp of ICEE on a grueling drive to Las Vegas with no A/C. It’s manna. The stomach pains, headaches, chaotic transportation and absolute lack of order in central India are foils to the calmness of the mountains, proving that contrast is key to appreciating most things. The gluttonous neon explosion of Las Vegas amid vast desolation. The heights of Himachal Pradesh, rising from the heat.
The massiveness of these mountains can be described in conventional terms. But when you stare up towards the peaks that disappear into the clouds, you’re no longer concerned with meters. Ahh, the sublime consequence of one land mass violently pushing itself into another. The majesty of plate tectonics. One tiny flinch of these mountains can erase a town, can flatten cultures and memories into an indiscernible parenthesis in its own history. The earth moves itself, wholly uninterested with the success of the human legacy.
For days I stared at these mountains from the balcony of Dragon Guest House in Old Manali, taking photos from a safe distance, separated by towns, roads and an apple orchard directly below my room. But there is a difference between idly witnessing the reign of the mountains, and climbing up the throne. To appreciate them, fully, you have to crawl for it. Work for it.
For four days I did, despite initial resistance. I am not feeling strong and my lungs, at these altitudes, resemble – in dimension and efficacy – small deflated balloons. But the alternative was to enjoy the Himalayas via a bus trip farther north to Kashmir, dangerously close to the Pakistani border. Last week, terrorists blew up a tourist bus, killing 40. Days later, a bus flew off a cliff. There is a blatant lack of regulations in India. Transportation is generally uncomfortable and off-schedule but is also, occasionally, life threatening. Activities inherently adventurous, therefore, border on the suicidal. I asked about a paragliding course. The man said, “Well the good news is nobody has died…this year.” So I crossed that off. A four-day trek involved few risks, I thought.
Day 2: The temperature is close to 40 degrees. There is not a single part of my body that is not drenched. How many people can fit in a 3-man tent? Eleven. I am squatting Vietnamese style in one corner, staring into the hems and pant cuffs of fellow trekkers, wondering if their feet are as blistered and frozen as mine. I am in this position for an hour and can no longer feel my legs.
The clouds came up fast during lunch and we had to duck under a boulder, eating boiled eggs and tomato sandwiches until the drenching stopped. It let up just long enough to fool us into thinking we could reach campsite. Grey clouds move quickly, predatorily and one hour later, I am ducking under another boulder. The terrain is flat, though, suitable for a makeshift campsite. But the porters carrying the tents are lost. It is their first time on this trail. Fortunately, another trekking group has joined us and quickly pitch a 3-man tent.
We wait inside.
The other group’s equipment arrives on ponyback. They put up their tents, dig canals around the perimeters to curtail flooding, dive inside and change to dry clothing.
Our porters are still lost.
The guide and cook of the other group invite us to their tent. They pour kerosene in a metal tank, pressurize it, throw a match on the burner and I watch the fire in awe, as if this guide in a pastel beanie with fringes and soaked jeans were Prometheus himself. It is 5,000 years ago, I’m gnawing on a deer leg, icicles forming on my hair and on the tip of my extremely large nose. The guy in front of me strikes the flint stone. The first spark. The first fire. It is the single most important moment in human civilization. Tomorrow, we domesticate animals.
I remove my Ecco boots (which I proudly endorse for their comfort, durability and value) and put my feet across the burner. If I have on piece of dry clothing tomorrow, I will be happy. If I do not freeze to death tonight, I will be happy. If these porters find their way, I will be happy. While my standard of living plummets, the cook and the guide of this other group has boiled water and offers me tea and cookies. My hands and feet warm, regaining their color and senses.
Day 3: From a coach’s “come on legs, you can do it” to the Buddhist “this too, will pass” to the visceral “we will feast on chicken tikka masala when we return to town” to the march from Selma to Washington D.C.’s “we shall overcome” I try every psychological approach to survive. I recall a Eurodance hit to inspire rhythm in my step. I scream. I insult the mountains. Everything helps. Nothing helps. Every tenth step is my last. My tiny deflated balloon lungs are bursting at their seams. I breathe as a yogi, slowly through my nose. The image of a tennis coach flashes. “Jose, what level are you? Slow your breathing. You’re not ready until you’re above level 5.” Coach, I’m off the charts, I’m in the negative. And by the way, I’m still having problems with my forehand volley. I gasp wildly through my mouth as if I’d been thrown on board a ship, having nearly drowned.
It is the last stretch of a 7,600 ft climb. Almost there. Almost there. Hampta Pass is glazed with ice and each step slides back a few inches. Not enough to impede progress, but plenty to demoralize. My biggest fear is sliding all the way down. It’s not about crashing into rocks, but having to reset all of my mind tricks to get me up here again. So I crawl, putting my hands on ice, digging into pony, sheep and goat feces.
The celebration at the apex of Hampta Pass, elevation 13,530 ft., is short lived. The rain clouds are here and we are hit with pea-sized hail. Better than rain, I suppose, smiling, laughing. It’s the lack of oxygen and the assurance from the guide that it’s all downhill from here that makes me hysterical. I’m chomping on a chapatti (think soft taco shell). I can’t feel my fingers. I wiped them on a clump of grass and deemed them clean enough to partake of this feast. I’m coughing up phlegm and snot. It’s the best worst day of my life.
And what a short life it would’ve been. On the rocky descent, I take my sweet time. When will I next be in a valley cut by glaciers? When will I ever see mountains like these? I take photos, throw rocks off cliffs. I pretend I’m a goat, hopping from rock to rock, until my knees rebel. Everybody’s made it down to the valley but me and a Dutch guy. I’m physically retarded; his waterproof shoes broke and has had to manage with slippery sandals.
And then they are screaming. Everybody in the valley, hundreds of feet away. The distance muffles their greeting. The guide is waving frantically with his arms. Alright guys, hi. I’ll be there soon. And then it came. First one rock. And then a couple. And then the thunderous sound of my heart in full panic. Rocks spinning in the air, hurling themselves straight down and then to the right and then to the left. The paths of these large rocks are unpredictable and their speed makes each one – even a tiny pebble – life threatening. One good hit on the noggin will do it. I freeze for a fraction of a moment. Panic requires just an instance to engage, I found out. I run through mud, and poo and over rocks to take cover beneath large boulder.
Better a rock avalanche than a snow avalanche, I thought. In the midst of raining rocks, I’m eager to draw the silver lining. The large boulder is steady, firm. It would take a lot to tumble it onto me. We can wait this out. Almost there. If I make it to my tent tonight, I will be happy. I if I make it drenched, numb and hungry, I will be happy. I fantasize about Day 2.
Day 4: It’s still early in the morning. The sun – which I now worship as a good pagan boy would -- hasn’t entered the valley. With the wind it is below freezing. And yet, I take off my boots. I take off my socks. I roll up my shorts as high as they’ll go. I take deep breaths and enter the river.
We form a chain. I hold the guide’s forearm. The Dutch guy with the sandals (which he doesn’t bother to remove) grabs mine. The water is from the glacier at one end of Spiti Valley. It is colder than any chunk of ice you’ve ever had on your tongue. It is more painful than any ice cream induced brain freeze that’s ever made you cringe. It is like one billion thorns of ice clamping down on your legs, squeezing the blood still. My toes jam into rocks, but I can’t feel them. I cannot feel my feet. The boulders turn into pebbles. The raging current slows to a passive flow. We’ve reached the other side. And we scream.
The guide takes out a towel and beings to dry himself. The Dutch Guy with the sandals has fled and is running down the valley. I’m in disbelief. I poke my calves and feet and toes and am amazed that I can’t feel them. This is how protohumans must have anesthetized themselves. The guide throws me the towel. I put my socks on but cannot feel my toes. I don’t know if one toe is being bent backwards or if one has broken. But we have to go. There is a 9:30 bus to catch.
Almost there, Jose, almost there.
[The following description details five minutes of the worst decision I have ever made. I should’ve said something, but I didn’t. I shouldn’t have done it.]
I have recovered sensation in my feet and we are only thirty minutes from the bus stop. We’ve reached a thirty-foot span of ice that slopes 40 degrees directly into a river that is about 50 feet wide. It is raging with freezing, muddy waters. The surface of the ice is smooth. There is nothing between the ice and the river but a ten-foot drop. I see some dirt patches on the ice and I’m convinced the other group has made it across. Later, I’d find out they hadn’t. They recognized the danger and opted to rock climb above and across the ice.
We form a human chain again. This time, the Dutch guy with the sandals is in the middle. Jam your feet sideways, says the guide. Walk slowly, securely. Each step is a risk I’m unwilling to repeat. There are things worth a bit of danger. Crossing this patch of ice is not one of them. I‘m holding the forearm of the Dutch guy with my right hand. I’m crouched down, stepping slowly, using my left hand to claw into the ice. One slip of one foot of one of us would’ve triggered a disastrous, irreversible chain reaction. Two people couldn’t support the weight of the fallen third. Maybe on firm footing. But not on ice, not with the precarious toehold we were all relying on. Not if we willed it to happen. Gravity will always win. One step. I do not look forward, behind or below. I’m staring at the contours of my boot, the microscopic indentations in the snow. We move one step at a time.
I fantasize about Day 3, about Day 2. If I do not die, well, I’ll be alive and that’s all I’m asking for.
We made it to the bus stop in time, but the bus was full and we spent the next four hours playing cards and trying to keep warm.
The game is Cheaters and this is how it goes. Objective is to get rid of all the cards, which have been equally distributed between me, the Dutch guy with the sandals, the guide, the other group’s guide who fed me tea and cookies two nights before and a man who owns a 4x4. The group that had always been ahead of us hopped onto another bus to another part of the mountains.
I throw two cards on the table, faced down. I say I’ve put down two queens. Next player says he’s putting down one queen. The next says he’s putting down another. The next says he’s putting down another two queens. Who’s lying? If you suspect a player of cheating, you can turn over the cards. If your suspicion proves baseless, then you pick up the stack. If you are correct, though, and sniff out a liar, then he picks up the stack and you determine the value of the next card played.
To say that I’m horrible at the game is a colossal understatement. In my prolific career of deception, it is in these trivial situations that I find lying uncomfortable. I am also psychologically desperate to find cause for levity. In a four day stretch of fearing for your life, you’d be surprised at how the most mundane things can disarm you, can bust your side in unjustified laughter, can bring you to tears, falling over chairs, thanking good god you’re alive to be the ultimate loser for three straight rounds. This, today, is the best worst day of my life.
Varanasi: Holy....
(Manali, India 13:42.19.6.2004)
Yes. It looks like he’s going to rub my arm with his sweat and snot.
I am sitting on a straw mat, facing the holy Ganges River. My right arm is stretched forward, resting on the shoulder of a chubby man who yelled at me at just the right time.
“Shave your head?”
I shook my head – which I had shaved just 2 weeks ago – and walked away.
“Massage?”
After a chaotic introduction to Varanasi, the holiest of Hindu cities, a massage sounded like a good idea. Within five minutes of hopping onto the Mahanagari Express from Mumbai to Varanasi, one man tried to con me out of my bunk bed, another asked me “why do you travel without locking your luggage?” and another physically chained himself to his large duffel bag. Not the most auspicious of signs. Not exactly the indefatigable ladies of Cathay Pacific who ask to see my boarding pass. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Lustre, would you like an American newspaper?”
Thirty hours later, the taxi driver couldn’t “find the gear” of his “new” car, and thus choked the geriatric vehicle to stall five times. During these breaks, I witnessed striking images of poverty and illness; personifications of diseases that I assumed to have been eradicated. A man was crawling on the ground, tumors covering his body. A woman held out her hand for some rupees. Her palm was seared a fresh pink and she had only three fingers. The driver then offered a day-long tour in this four-wheeled deathtrap for a “very reasonable price, boss.”
The car didn’t explode and I finally arrived at Hotel Temple at the Ganges, towards the south end of the city. I had big plans of naps, and brushing my teeth and a shower. I arrived at 6:30 in the morning. The electricity was killed within twenty minutes, immobilizing the fan and A/C. The temperature was already in the 90s when I left the room to walk along the river.
A Hindu’s visit to Varanasi is not unlike a Muslim’s pilgrimage to Mecca. A person who dies within the city automatically liberates himself from repeating the life-death cycle. Varanasi is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The Ganges River is a thick brown, not as thick as the green sludge of Venice’s canals, but unquestionably dirtier. The city’s sewage drains directly into it. Yet, the river teems with people who are bathing, diving, fishing, doing laundry. The place is filthy. And at the end of town, the river is so polluted that there is no traceable oxygen left in the water. A responsible portrayal of this area should devote at least a couple lines to feces. There is shit everywhere. And the 100 degree heat cooks fresh piles of it, lacing the already thick air with strains of pungency. Because cows are sacred here, they go wherever they please and indiscriminately leave behind steaming gifts. Some of the shit is picked up and placed neatly in polka dot arrangements near the river. Dried, they can be used as fuel, fertilizer and Shiva knows what else.
It is in this backdrop of filth that this man called to me. My refusals of touts has become second nature. No I do not need a rickshaw ride, a tailor, marijuana or a shawl for my mother. But for this man, I stopped. A massage might just fend off a heat/stress induced headache that’s creeping quickly up my neck.
He begins by flicking my vertebrae, all the way up to the base of my head. I imagine this technique being born on these river banks thousands of years ago, fine tuned over generations, harnessing arcane knowledge of the human anatomy the continues to elude Western science. It is during this brief fantasy that he has sneezed and wiped the slimy residue with his hands. Well what else was he going to use? His feet? My hands? The newly opened box of 3-ply aloe-infused Kleenex tissues he picked up at the neighborhood grocery store?
He flashes a big ol’ smile, communicating something like “no problem.” He grips my upper arm with both hands and begins to rub, loosening muscle, stimulating bloodflow and greasing my arm – and eventually my face – with his sweat and snot.
This was my initiation into the brotherhood of the Ganges.
Ahh. And the improbable charm of a hellhole.
Three days later I am secretly hoping I’m too ill to leave the city. I woke up with a headache, fever and with every cell of my throat on fire. And to cure this, I’m balancing on my head. Planted my forearms on the mat, wedged my head between and kicked my feet up. Miraculously, they stayed up. The blood rushes to my head, quickly adding pressure to my eyes, my brain. I imagine, with each cool, blue inhalation, the valiant troop of white cells, T cells and antibodies seeking the purveyors of this fever.
Despite the fever, the shit, the pollution, the noise, the unrelenting force of touts and beggars outside Hotel Temple at the Ganges, there is something about Varanasi that keeps a fat kid’s smile on my face. There is no good reason for anybody to like this place, and yet…
Met up with a Dutch guy I met on the flight to Mumbai from Bangkok. There is immediate consensus on Varanasi. It’s hot as all hell and there’s nothing to do. Waiting to see the first floating corpse on the river – while exhilarating at the moment of positive identification – is hardly a fulfilling way to pass the afternoon. It’s like waiting three-and-a-half hours for a 30-second roller coaster ride. And yet, there is a Swiss woman who’s been here for 3 weeks. On several occasions, I sit on a balcony overlooking the slow progress of the Ganges, and think, “Do I really need to see the Taj Mahal so soon? It’s stood in Agra for hundreds of years, and has been immortalized on cookie cans and calendars. Surely, I can afford to stay here a few more days.”
What is it?
Is it me giving into Madonna’s propaganda, enlisting in a 4-hours a day yoga class with a maniacal teacher? Doing sun and moon salutations until I’m out of breath. Having to rest in alligator and frog poses, leaving moth-shaped sweat marks on the mat. Defying my own sense of physical limits by bending over backwards, forming a bridge of cosmic energy with my abdomen and spine. Holding myself in a pushup position as the teacher yells, “Be like a tree limb! Straight! Straight!” Was it the moment I balanced on my head and erased a personal legacy of clumsiness?
Is it the nightly blackouts? The first time it happened, I was walking along the river and had to tip-toe all the way back to the hotel, carefully avoiding poo and the slumbering holy man. The second time it happened, I was prepared and woke up an old man with a boat. Paid him a couple bucks to row me back. Except he wasn’t fully awake. His right arm is much stronger than his left, so we kept veering towards the shore. A consecutive burst of left handed strokes realigned the boat. But then he actually fell asleep. His arms need no cognizant, governing force, so they just kept rowing. And we crashed into a boat. And then lost one oar. And I said, you can drop me off here, this is fine. Couldn’t quite make it to the shore, so I had to wade through the river. I held my breath, as if it would mitigate the bacterial invasion. Still I imagined fingernails, feces and frogs clinging to my legs. I race back to the bathroom of the hotel, this time unconcerned with the karmic repercussions of a holy misstep.
The yoga? The blackouts? Is it the dead rats on the street? The insects that dive bomb into my face as I eat? The endless glasses of black tea drunk while exchanging itineraries and gastric symptoms with the fellow traveler? The burning bodies? The smell of it all that never, ever goes away? The throbbing diversity of Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus – among others whose faiths I’m too ignorant to identify – who live singly in Varanasi? Mosques next to temple. Women covered head to ankle in black cloth, passing women adorned in henna and gold? Is it their children who bear few vestiges of religion but instead follow a procession of Western influence? Faded jeans and knock off Adidas shirts, singing songs from the latest Bollywood flick. These children scream up and down the alleys, avoiding cows in chasing games. Avoiding poo in hopscotch, but taking a few seconds to yell HELLO to the lost tourist.
No, not these.
I know the secret of Varanasi. If you ask a rickshaw driver to take you to the main ghat – or steps that lead into the river -- just walk towards the river until you pass the temple on the left hand side. They are usually frying potatoes there. The next alley is where you enter the labyrinth. You’ll see a ladder, propped up against a small café. They’ve been trying to install an awning for days. Go straight, until you see a tiny store selling Fuji film. Take a left. Walk 20 meters until you see a sleeping dog on a wooden step. It won’t seem like anything, but open the door – usually it already is – and ask if you can come in. Don’t step on the dog. You will see a small child with a round face, wearing a sweater vest. He claims he’s 15. He’s the one you pay.
2 rupees for 3 rounds of Street Fighter II. 13 rupees for each 90 lines in Tetris. 2 rupees again for one life in Mario Bros.
There is only space for two benches, an arm’s length away from a counter. Two TVs that need an occasional slap, and cloned Nintendo machines sit on this counter. If you’re a sweaty tourist, they’ll even turn on a rusty fan that’s missing its cover. The controllers are broken. The directional keypad rotates freely, disorienting me and my Street Fighter II character. I can’t get Guile to do his razor kicks or sonic booms. I challenge a kid, insisting with all of my American bravado to show him how this game’s really played. I won the first round, he won the second and the deciding third ended with me shrieking. My 13 year old opponent with a head bandage had tolerated enough of my childhood nostalgia. I screamed at him, called him a cheater and moved on to play Tetris.
(Manali, India 13:42.19.6.2004)
Yes. It looks like he’s going to rub my arm with his sweat and snot.
I am sitting on a straw mat, facing the holy Ganges River. My right arm is stretched forward, resting on the shoulder of a chubby man who yelled at me at just the right time.
“Shave your head?”
I shook my head – which I had shaved just 2 weeks ago – and walked away.
“Massage?”
After a chaotic introduction to Varanasi, the holiest of Hindu cities, a massage sounded like a good idea. Within five minutes of hopping onto the Mahanagari Express from Mumbai to Varanasi, one man tried to con me out of my bunk bed, another asked me “why do you travel without locking your luggage?” and another physically chained himself to his large duffel bag. Not the most auspicious of signs. Not exactly the indefatigable ladies of Cathay Pacific who ask to see my boarding pass. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Lustre, would you like an American newspaper?”
Thirty hours later, the taxi driver couldn’t “find the gear” of his “new” car, and thus choked the geriatric vehicle to stall five times. During these breaks, I witnessed striking images of poverty and illness; personifications of diseases that I assumed to have been eradicated. A man was crawling on the ground, tumors covering his body. A woman held out her hand for some rupees. Her palm was seared a fresh pink and she had only three fingers. The driver then offered a day-long tour in this four-wheeled deathtrap for a “very reasonable price, boss.”
The car didn’t explode and I finally arrived at Hotel Temple at the Ganges, towards the south end of the city. I had big plans of naps, and brushing my teeth and a shower. I arrived at 6:30 in the morning. The electricity was killed within twenty minutes, immobilizing the fan and A/C. The temperature was already in the 90s when I left the room to walk along the river.
A Hindu’s visit to Varanasi is not unlike a Muslim’s pilgrimage to Mecca. A person who dies within the city automatically liberates himself from repeating the life-death cycle. Varanasi is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The Ganges River is a thick brown, not as thick as the green sludge of Venice’s canals, but unquestionably dirtier. The city’s sewage drains directly into it. Yet, the river teems with people who are bathing, diving, fishing, doing laundry. The place is filthy. And at the end of town, the river is so polluted that there is no traceable oxygen left in the water. A responsible portrayal of this area should devote at least a couple lines to feces. There is shit everywhere. And the 100 degree heat cooks fresh piles of it, lacing the already thick air with strains of pungency. Because cows are sacred here, they go wherever they please and indiscriminately leave behind steaming gifts. Some of the shit is picked up and placed neatly in polka dot arrangements near the river. Dried, they can be used as fuel, fertilizer and Shiva knows what else.
It is in this backdrop of filth that this man called to me. My refusals of touts has become second nature. No I do not need a rickshaw ride, a tailor, marijuana or a shawl for my mother. But for this man, I stopped. A massage might just fend off a heat/stress induced headache that’s creeping quickly up my neck.
He begins by flicking my vertebrae, all the way up to the base of my head. I imagine this technique being born on these river banks thousands of years ago, fine tuned over generations, harnessing arcane knowledge of the human anatomy the continues to elude Western science. It is during this brief fantasy that he has sneezed and wiped the slimy residue with his hands. Well what else was he going to use? His feet? My hands? The newly opened box of 3-ply aloe-infused Kleenex tissues he picked up at the neighborhood grocery store?
He flashes a big ol’ smile, communicating something like “no problem.” He grips my upper arm with both hands and begins to rub, loosening muscle, stimulating bloodflow and greasing my arm – and eventually my face – with his sweat and snot.
This was my initiation into the brotherhood of the Ganges.
Ahh. And the improbable charm of a hellhole.
Three days later I am secretly hoping I’m too ill to leave the city. I woke up with a headache, fever and with every cell of my throat on fire. And to cure this, I’m balancing on my head. Planted my forearms on the mat, wedged my head between and kicked my feet up. Miraculously, they stayed up. The blood rushes to my head, quickly adding pressure to my eyes, my brain. I imagine, with each cool, blue inhalation, the valiant troop of white cells, T cells and antibodies seeking the purveyors of this fever.
Despite the fever, the shit, the pollution, the noise, the unrelenting force of touts and beggars outside Hotel Temple at the Ganges, there is something about Varanasi that keeps a fat kid’s smile on my face. There is no good reason for anybody to like this place, and yet…
Met up with a Dutch guy I met on the flight to Mumbai from Bangkok. There is immediate consensus on Varanasi. It’s hot as all hell and there’s nothing to do. Waiting to see the first floating corpse on the river – while exhilarating at the moment of positive identification – is hardly a fulfilling way to pass the afternoon. It’s like waiting three-and-a-half hours for a 30-second roller coaster ride. And yet, there is a Swiss woman who’s been here for 3 weeks. On several occasions, I sit on a balcony overlooking the slow progress of the Ganges, and think, “Do I really need to see the Taj Mahal so soon? It’s stood in Agra for hundreds of years, and has been immortalized on cookie cans and calendars. Surely, I can afford to stay here a few more days.”
What is it?
Is it me giving into Madonna’s propaganda, enlisting in a 4-hours a day yoga class with a maniacal teacher? Doing sun and moon salutations until I’m out of breath. Having to rest in alligator and frog poses, leaving moth-shaped sweat marks on the mat. Defying my own sense of physical limits by bending over backwards, forming a bridge of cosmic energy with my abdomen and spine. Holding myself in a pushup position as the teacher yells, “Be like a tree limb! Straight! Straight!” Was it the moment I balanced on my head and erased a personal legacy of clumsiness?
Is it the nightly blackouts? The first time it happened, I was walking along the river and had to tip-toe all the way back to the hotel, carefully avoiding poo and the slumbering holy man. The second time it happened, I was prepared and woke up an old man with a boat. Paid him a couple bucks to row me back. Except he wasn’t fully awake. His right arm is much stronger than his left, so we kept veering towards the shore. A consecutive burst of left handed strokes realigned the boat. But then he actually fell asleep. His arms need no cognizant, governing force, so they just kept rowing. And we crashed into a boat. And then lost one oar. And I said, you can drop me off here, this is fine. Couldn’t quite make it to the shore, so I had to wade through the river. I held my breath, as if it would mitigate the bacterial invasion. Still I imagined fingernails, feces and frogs clinging to my legs. I race back to the bathroom of the hotel, this time unconcerned with the karmic repercussions of a holy misstep.
The yoga? The blackouts? Is it the dead rats on the street? The insects that dive bomb into my face as I eat? The endless glasses of black tea drunk while exchanging itineraries and gastric symptoms with the fellow traveler? The burning bodies? The smell of it all that never, ever goes away? The throbbing diversity of Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus – among others whose faiths I’m too ignorant to identify – who live singly in Varanasi? Mosques next to temple. Women covered head to ankle in black cloth, passing women adorned in henna and gold? Is it their children who bear few vestiges of religion but instead follow a procession of Western influence? Faded jeans and knock off Adidas shirts, singing songs from the latest Bollywood flick. These children scream up and down the alleys, avoiding cows in chasing games. Avoiding poo in hopscotch, but taking a few seconds to yell HELLO to the lost tourist.
No, not these.
I know the secret of Varanasi. If you ask a rickshaw driver to take you to the main ghat – or steps that lead into the river -- just walk towards the river until you pass the temple on the left hand side. They are usually frying potatoes there. The next alley is where you enter the labyrinth. You’ll see a ladder, propped up against a small café. They’ve been trying to install an awning for days. Go straight, until you see a tiny store selling Fuji film. Take a left. Walk 20 meters until you see a sleeping dog on a wooden step. It won’t seem like anything, but open the door – usually it already is – and ask if you can come in. Don’t step on the dog. You will see a small child with a round face, wearing a sweater vest. He claims he’s 15. He’s the one you pay.
2 rupees for 3 rounds of Street Fighter II. 13 rupees for each 90 lines in Tetris. 2 rupees again for one life in Mario Bros.
There is only space for two benches, an arm’s length away from a counter. Two TVs that need an occasional slap, and cloned Nintendo machines sit on this counter. If you’re a sweaty tourist, they’ll even turn on a rusty fan that’s missing its cover. The controllers are broken. The directional keypad rotates freely, disorienting me and my Street Fighter II character. I can’t get Guile to do his razor kicks or sonic booms. I challenge a kid, insisting with all of my American bravado to show him how this game’s really played. I won the first round, he won the second and the deciding third ended with me shrieking. My 13 year old opponent with a head bandage had tolerated enough of my childhood nostalgia. I screamed at him, called him a cheater and moved on to play Tetris.
Bali
(Mumbai, India 19.17.6.6.2004)
In this vegetarian, organic, new age, free range cafe/restaurant/lounge, a middle aged woman sits in the lotus position. Her back is nice and straight. Inhalations deep and deliberate. Tucked inside one of Ubud's many allies, this joint is called, after all, the Bali Buddha Cafe. The woman's pasty white skin and ruddy curls contrast against the lush green floral print of her tank top. Her flesh hadn't seen the sun for months before flying to Bali. Her glasses reveal a less glamorous life back home. Maybe an assistant to a pushy boss. Maybe the school children's favorite librarian.
"I will give you everything you’ve ever wanted," she says to one of the waitresses. Her voice is clear, and loud. She's American. Could be Canadian. This lofty promise engages me as well.
"I will give you the doorway to everything you want," she continues, adjusting her glasses, "but you have to open the door."
I now know that this woman spent this morning at a yoga workshop -- handed over forty bucks so that she could breathe. Spent a couple hours on a mat, passing energies through her chakras, hoping to bottle up the inner peace that she had all along, apparently, but couldn't release.
"What you do is sit like I'm sitting -- go on do it!"
The waitress is leaning against the counter, visibly disappointed by the metaphorical ending to the promise. She doesn't assume lotus position. And I sink back into my rattan chair and dig into my tofu burger.
"OK, well, can you see that wall in front of you?" She pantomimes a flat panel in the indeterminate distance. "Everything you want is behind that wall. All you have to do is breathe through it. Breathe THROUGH the wall."
Ubud sits in the hills of central Bali. It is 2.5 hours north of surfer magnet Kuta. Unlike the blatant and shameless McDonaldsization of Kuta, Ubud promises tourists an exotic Balinese experience. The city is acclaimed as one of the island's cultural epicenters. Bali's identity is distinct from the rest of Indonesia. It's about as Indonesian as Hong Kong is to the rest of China, or Manhattan is to the Midwest. Same country, but only in political and cartographic terms. As Islam spread from the Malay peninsula down through Sumatra and Java, Hindus were pushed farther east, eventually settling in Bali, where the religion hybridized with extant folk lore. Balinese Hinduism, while preserving core Hindu practices, eventually developed its own sets of gods. Statues of bird like monsters and sinister monkeys eating children show this deviation. Ganesh wears a very tropical headdress. And while this culture supposedly prevails in modern-day Bali, an altogether Western atmosphere grips the island. Accommodations in Ubud, are lavish and classy – which to me, are euphemisms for prohibitively expensive. Jazz bars, day spas and meditation workshops sit cozily between Balinese handicraft outlets and ATMs.
Introductions at restaurants echo a cosmopolitan clientele. Yes, here is my friend, Michele (that’s a guy’s name) who I met years ago at a conference in Paris. Or Tokyo. Or Geneva.
I asked a man where he was from.
“Oh, New York /Miami.”
To which I could only reply, “Wow that’s a big chunk of the eastern seaboard.”
“But now my home is where my two feet happen to stand.”
Of course.
Budget travelers are outnumbered in Bali. Although ‘outnumbered’ may not be the most accurate word. Tourism in Bali, according to a hotel employee in Kuta, has dropped at least 30% after the club bombings two years ago. Last year’s attacks in Jakarta exacerbated the situation. The government recently implemented strict visa regulations that require payments from tourists on arrival. These blows have rendered many of Bali’s famous getaways as ghost towns. Abandoned tourist offices are commonplace.
A beautiful 3 hours north of Ubud is quaint and picturesque Lovina. During the ride, the bus passes through crater lakes, rain forest and rice fields. I promise myself to rent a motorbike and explore the area on my own. Certainly it is the natural legacy of this island that nurtured its people’s culture. But Lovina is empty and the forcefulness of taxi drivers and hotel pushers borders on belligerence.
A man has climbed into the bus before it has completely stopped. He pushes a piece of paper to my face. Photos of a comfortable bedroom. “Very close to the beach…only 50,000 Rupiahs…You come look, truck will take you now.”
“What street is this on? On Dinaria?” I ask him. I fear this hotel is not only overpriced but also removed from the center of town.
The bus stops. More men come. Other hotels. Cheaper ones that sound better. But my bag is gone and the 50,000 Rupiah Man is running away with it.
“You say you go to my hotel!”
“That’s my bag!”
He runs to this truck and stuffs the bag in the back. He hops into the driver’s seat as his assistant secures the bags and tries to shut the door. I get in his way. But I am shoved back. He detects, not a frantic, innocent tourist, but another body in a clutter of desperate men. I scream at him in perfect English. The 50,000 Rupiah Man hears and jumps out of his seat. The men now have formed a circle around me.
There is selling, even aggressive selling, but there are lines that still cannot be crossed. 50,000 Rupiah Man knows this as well as the others. The assistant, whose elbows and back had jammed against my chest, now shrank. He didn’t look at me as he opened the door. The 50,000 Rupiah Man was screaming at him.
I couldn’t understand. Maybe it was how much money he had just lost for the hotel. Maybe it was never to treat a tourist this way. I hopped onto the back of a competitor’s motorbike, secured and balanced my backpack and sped away, as the screaming voice of the 50,000 Rupiah Man quickly disappeared in the traffic. The motorbike driver tried to apologize on behalf of the other men. But I said it wasn’t necessary. I understood and was able to shake it off immediately.
The hotel I am staying at is gorgeous, meters away from the beach and much cheaper than 50,000 Rupiahs, which is worth about $6.25.
(Mumbai, India 19.17.6.6.2004)
In this vegetarian, organic, new age, free range cafe/restaurant/lounge, a middle aged woman sits in the lotus position. Her back is nice and straight. Inhalations deep and deliberate. Tucked inside one of Ubud's many allies, this joint is called, after all, the Bali Buddha Cafe. The woman's pasty white skin and ruddy curls contrast against the lush green floral print of her tank top. Her flesh hadn't seen the sun for months before flying to Bali. Her glasses reveal a less glamorous life back home. Maybe an assistant to a pushy boss. Maybe the school children's favorite librarian.
"I will give you everything you’ve ever wanted," she says to one of the waitresses. Her voice is clear, and loud. She's American. Could be Canadian. This lofty promise engages me as well.
"I will give you the doorway to everything you want," she continues, adjusting her glasses, "but you have to open the door."
I now know that this woman spent this morning at a yoga workshop -- handed over forty bucks so that she could breathe. Spent a couple hours on a mat, passing energies through her chakras, hoping to bottle up the inner peace that she had all along, apparently, but couldn't release.
"What you do is sit like I'm sitting -- go on do it!"
The waitress is leaning against the counter, visibly disappointed by the metaphorical ending to the promise. She doesn't assume lotus position. And I sink back into my rattan chair and dig into my tofu burger.
"OK, well, can you see that wall in front of you?" She pantomimes a flat panel in the indeterminate distance. "Everything you want is behind that wall. All you have to do is breathe through it. Breathe THROUGH the wall."
Ubud sits in the hills of central Bali. It is 2.5 hours north of surfer magnet Kuta. Unlike the blatant and shameless McDonaldsization of Kuta, Ubud promises tourists an exotic Balinese experience. The city is acclaimed as one of the island's cultural epicenters. Bali's identity is distinct from the rest of Indonesia. It's about as Indonesian as Hong Kong is to the rest of China, or Manhattan is to the Midwest. Same country, but only in political and cartographic terms. As Islam spread from the Malay peninsula down through Sumatra and Java, Hindus were pushed farther east, eventually settling in Bali, where the religion hybridized with extant folk lore. Balinese Hinduism, while preserving core Hindu practices, eventually developed its own sets of gods. Statues of bird like monsters and sinister monkeys eating children show this deviation. Ganesh wears a very tropical headdress. And while this culture supposedly prevails in modern-day Bali, an altogether Western atmosphere grips the island. Accommodations in Ubud, are lavish and classy – which to me, are euphemisms for prohibitively expensive. Jazz bars, day spas and meditation workshops sit cozily between Balinese handicraft outlets and ATMs.
Introductions at restaurants echo a cosmopolitan clientele. Yes, here is my friend, Michele (that’s a guy’s name) who I met years ago at a conference in Paris. Or Tokyo. Or Geneva.
I asked a man where he was from.
“Oh, New York /Miami.”
To which I could only reply, “Wow that’s a big chunk of the eastern seaboard.”
“But now my home is where my two feet happen to stand.”
Of course.
Budget travelers are outnumbered in Bali. Although ‘outnumbered’ may not be the most accurate word. Tourism in Bali, according to a hotel employee in Kuta, has dropped at least 30% after the club bombings two years ago. Last year’s attacks in Jakarta exacerbated the situation. The government recently implemented strict visa regulations that require payments from tourists on arrival. These blows have rendered many of Bali’s famous getaways as ghost towns. Abandoned tourist offices are commonplace.
A beautiful 3 hours north of Ubud is quaint and picturesque Lovina. During the ride, the bus passes through crater lakes, rain forest and rice fields. I promise myself to rent a motorbike and explore the area on my own. Certainly it is the natural legacy of this island that nurtured its people’s culture. But Lovina is empty and the forcefulness of taxi drivers and hotel pushers borders on belligerence.
A man has climbed into the bus before it has completely stopped. He pushes a piece of paper to my face. Photos of a comfortable bedroom. “Very close to the beach…only 50,000 Rupiahs…You come look, truck will take you now.”
“What street is this on? On Dinaria?” I ask him. I fear this hotel is not only overpriced but also removed from the center of town.
The bus stops. More men come. Other hotels. Cheaper ones that sound better. But my bag is gone and the 50,000 Rupiah Man is running away with it.
“You say you go to my hotel!”
“That’s my bag!”
He runs to this truck and stuffs the bag in the back. He hops into the driver’s seat as his assistant secures the bags and tries to shut the door. I get in his way. But I am shoved back. He detects, not a frantic, innocent tourist, but another body in a clutter of desperate men. I scream at him in perfect English. The 50,000 Rupiah Man hears and jumps out of his seat. The men now have formed a circle around me.
There is selling, even aggressive selling, but there are lines that still cannot be crossed. 50,000 Rupiah Man knows this as well as the others. The assistant, whose elbows and back had jammed against my chest, now shrank. He didn’t look at me as he opened the door. The 50,000 Rupiah Man was screaming at him.
I couldn’t understand. Maybe it was how much money he had just lost for the hotel. Maybe it was never to treat a tourist this way. I hopped onto the back of a competitor’s motorbike, secured and balanced my backpack and sped away, as the screaming voice of the 50,000 Rupiah Man quickly disappeared in the traffic. The motorbike driver tried to apologize on behalf of the other men. But I said it wasn’t necessary. I understood and was able to shake it off immediately.
The hotel I am staying at is gorgeous, meters away from the beach and much cheaper than 50,000 Rupiahs, which is worth about $6.25.
Gunong Bromo, Indonesia: Conmen and Sulfur
(Ubud, Indonesia 22:54.25.5.2004)
“What you have done is made us hostages.” The French guy says.
There’s five of us, not counting the two Indonesian men whose faces we had first seen only ten minutes ago. It isn’t much of a room, not much bigger than a janitor’s supply closet. Pissed-colored walls. Two battered couches. A scratched desk. Warped and fading photos of a volcano and a rudimentary topographical map of the area.
The mini bus had dropped us here and promptly left. After an 11 hour bus ride through the congested two lane roads of central Java, I start to lose sense of things. Hours melt into each other and time flows, not continuously, but in bursts: It flies through naps and particularly exciting chapters of books; refuses to advance when we inch through traffic. But now, a quarter past 8pm, we had to gather our wits.
“Yes, you must decide – now.” One of the men responded to girl from Munich.
At 9am that morning, off a small street in Jogjakarta, we hopped into a mini bus as complete strangers to whom ascending an active rater seemed like a neat idea. When you know you’re in for a long ride, conversations are politely terse: Where from? How long in Indonesia? How much did you pay? And then we squirmed and twisted until our bodies found comfortable positions to settle in. Some fell quickly asleep, the French guy pulled out his map. I pulled out my copy of Bel Canto, a book a girl was going to leave on the airplane in Jakarta. Strangely, the novel is about a hostage situation in South America. Strange how life imitates art imitates life.
Bromo sits in the eastern part of Java and describes not just one volcano, but a collection of volcanoes and craters nested within a massive crater that spans 24 miles. The site is considered one of Indonesia’s most spectacular. The altitude, at 12,000 feet, also provides a much needed escape from the heat. Jakarta and Jogjakarta – the biggest cities of the island – are urban frying pans. At the pinnacle of the crater, however, the temperature promises to drop a refreshing 60 degrees, flirting with the freezing point.
“What you are doing is bad.” I attempt a pitiful emotional approach. “We were not told we had to pay for this when we bought the ticket.”
“It is up to you,” the older one said. “What we are doing now is only giving you an offer.”
The offer was simple, really. For the right price, a 4x4 would take us from the village to the top of the crater. The alternative was to climb at 2am. For 3 hours. Without a guide. Without foot paths. In freezing temperature. The duration of the hike would also make it impossible to catch the morning bus out of town. The consequence of this would have been arriving at our next bus terminal at 3am. There are few things more intimidating to a traveler than setting foot at a strange hour in a stranger place, with only taxi drives and thieves to celebrate your arrival. When they begin to flock around you, like vultures sensing a fading vitality, not one person there is sympathetic to your disorientation. Nobody is interested in easing you into the city.
I turn to the others. “They’re lying to us. They’re making it seem impossible for us not to pay them.”
The 3 Germans start speaking to each other frantically. The Frenchman and I are clueless.
“I wish we all knew one secret language.” I said. “Anybody know Spanish? Tagalog?”
Turns out the Frenchman understands German and I dig deep in my fuzzy brain to understand and speak a rudimentary French. It is the childhood game of telephone, but on an international level. But this game would probably not end in lighthearted laughter. Still, with the Indonesian men silenced during our conversation, we feel for the first time a sense of control.
The Frenchman tries to bargain with the men. We know we must pay. Bargaining is a matter of daily course in Indonesia, and a custom that many are uncomfortable to engage in: Deception is at its core. The vendor lies about value, the buyer about how much money he has. The vendor gives in a bit. The buyer lies about how another vendor has offered him the identical item for 20% less. Vendor says the buyer is his first of this long, hot, grueling day. The buyer pretends to lose interest and begins to walk away.
Except in our situation, we are cornered. We cannot walk away, and there are no phantom vendors whose pretend prices can be used to our leverage.
The negotiations end. We agree in Germans, French and finally English to the men. They win. We lose, but not as much as they wanted us to.
We are sitting, packed tightly in the jeep. At 3:30am the temperature hovers near 30 degrees. We begin the ascent up the steep edge of the crater. This could not have been done on foot. At the top, we discover hundreds of mainly Indonesian tourists who’ve staked out the best vantage points. Did they endure the same negotiations? Other foreigners, easily spotted by their fancier cameras and thicker jackets are there as well. Later, I would meet a German man who nearly came to tears as he described his experience. He was lied to and cheated every time he opened his wallet. He had traveled extensively. Trekking in Nepal, hiking South America and canoeing in the Yukon. But these past rites didn’t prepare him for Indonesia. “this I one of the worst things I’ve ever had to do.”
Still the view is magnificent. It resembles a god-sized cauldron filled with mist; volcanoes and craters floating in this geologically rich soup. The primary crater emits a steady white smoke, while a volcano behind it puffs black smoke every 20 mins. As the sun rises, the mist slowly lifts, spilling out of the edge, quickly passing through the streets of a village before covering homes as well. Soon the villages disappears entirely.
We were to be taken to the active crater. That was part of our deal. Too steep to climb by jeep, the five of us begin the short hike, but immediately being choking. The air is thick with sulfur. A toxic yellow goo oozes from the ground, the liquefied form of the chemical. I wrap a bandana around my mouth and nose. I face away from the rim of the crater as even invisible particles sting my eyes and skin. Acid rain, I think. Nobody was told this tiny, hazardous detail. A long line of hacking foreigners trudging along this incline, climbing step by step like senseless lemmings eager to peer into a toxic spout. Tiny canals wind down the slope. This is what the moon must look like. Inside the crater, a deep ravine is filled with this same toxic yellow ooze. The white mist flows profusely from this crack.
I walk around the edge of the crater, past the tourists, past a sign that may have forbidden my exploration. But it wasn’t in English. One tiny slip would mean melting in the acid. Would I melt? Or suffocate first? Would my skin peel off to reveal a tortured skeleton, jaw slacked open in its final scream? Would tourists take pictures on their digital cameras and review it on their way down, still hacking and coughing?
It wasn’t only for curiosity’s sake that I ventured farther than I should have. I had to pee and had been holding it for hours. So I did it. Right in there.
What relief. Was this the first sense of relief in nearly 24 hours? The endless bus ride, the negotiations, waking up to freeze inside a small jeep, the acid in my eyes and throat. Relief. And then a slow, deep breath on the edge as my toxic yellow liquid slowly joined the crater’s.
(Ubud, Indonesia 22:54.25.5.2004)
“What you have done is made us hostages.” The French guy says.
There’s five of us, not counting the two Indonesian men whose faces we had first seen only ten minutes ago. It isn’t much of a room, not much bigger than a janitor’s supply closet. Pissed-colored walls. Two battered couches. A scratched desk. Warped and fading photos of a volcano and a rudimentary topographical map of the area.
The mini bus had dropped us here and promptly left. After an 11 hour bus ride through the congested two lane roads of central Java, I start to lose sense of things. Hours melt into each other and time flows, not continuously, but in bursts: It flies through naps and particularly exciting chapters of books; refuses to advance when we inch through traffic. But now, a quarter past 8pm, we had to gather our wits.
“Yes, you must decide – now.” One of the men responded to girl from Munich.
At 9am that morning, off a small street in Jogjakarta, we hopped into a mini bus as complete strangers to whom ascending an active rater seemed like a neat idea. When you know you’re in for a long ride, conversations are politely terse: Where from? How long in Indonesia? How much did you pay? And then we squirmed and twisted until our bodies found comfortable positions to settle in. Some fell quickly asleep, the French guy pulled out his map. I pulled out my copy of Bel Canto, a book a girl was going to leave on the airplane in Jakarta. Strangely, the novel is about a hostage situation in South America. Strange how life imitates art imitates life.
Bromo sits in the eastern part of Java and describes not just one volcano, but a collection of volcanoes and craters nested within a massive crater that spans 24 miles. The site is considered one of Indonesia’s most spectacular. The altitude, at 12,000 feet, also provides a much needed escape from the heat. Jakarta and Jogjakarta – the biggest cities of the island – are urban frying pans. At the pinnacle of the crater, however, the temperature promises to drop a refreshing 60 degrees, flirting with the freezing point.
“What you are doing is bad.” I attempt a pitiful emotional approach. “We were not told we had to pay for this when we bought the ticket.”
“It is up to you,” the older one said. “What we are doing now is only giving you an offer.”
The offer was simple, really. For the right price, a 4x4 would take us from the village to the top of the crater. The alternative was to climb at 2am. For 3 hours. Without a guide. Without foot paths. In freezing temperature. The duration of the hike would also make it impossible to catch the morning bus out of town. The consequence of this would have been arriving at our next bus terminal at 3am. There are few things more intimidating to a traveler than setting foot at a strange hour in a stranger place, with only taxi drives and thieves to celebrate your arrival. When they begin to flock around you, like vultures sensing a fading vitality, not one person there is sympathetic to your disorientation. Nobody is interested in easing you into the city.
I turn to the others. “They’re lying to us. They’re making it seem impossible for us not to pay them.”
The 3 Germans start speaking to each other frantically. The Frenchman and I are clueless.
“I wish we all knew one secret language.” I said. “Anybody know Spanish? Tagalog?”
Turns out the Frenchman understands German and I dig deep in my fuzzy brain to understand and speak a rudimentary French. It is the childhood game of telephone, but on an international level. But this game would probably not end in lighthearted laughter. Still, with the Indonesian men silenced during our conversation, we feel for the first time a sense of control.
The Frenchman tries to bargain with the men. We know we must pay. Bargaining is a matter of daily course in Indonesia, and a custom that many are uncomfortable to engage in: Deception is at its core. The vendor lies about value, the buyer about how much money he has. The vendor gives in a bit. The buyer lies about how another vendor has offered him the identical item for 20% less. Vendor says the buyer is his first of this long, hot, grueling day. The buyer pretends to lose interest and begins to walk away.
Except in our situation, we are cornered. We cannot walk away, and there are no phantom vendors whose pretend prices can be used to our leverage.
The negotiations end. We agree in Germans, French and finally English to the men. They win. We lose, but not as much as they wanted us to.
We are sitting, packed tightly in the jeep. At 3:30am the temperature hovers near 30 degrees. We begin the ascent up the steep edge of the crater. This could not have been done on foot. At the top, we discover hundreds of mainly Indonesian tourists who’ve staked out the best vantage points. Did they endure the same negotiations? Other foreigners, easily spotted by their fancier cameras and thicker jackets are there as well. Later, I would meet a German man who nearly came to tears as he described his experience. He was lied to and cheated every time he opened his wallet. He had traveled extensively. Trekking in Nepal, hiking South America and canoeing in the Yukon. But these past rites didn’t prepare him for Indonesia. “this I one of the worst things I’ve ever had to do.”
Still the view is magnificent. It resembles a god-sized cauldron filled with mist; volcanoes and craters floating in this geologically rich soup. The primary crater emits a steady white smoke, while a volcano behind it puffs black smoke every 20 mins. As the sun rises, the mist slowly lifts, spilling out of the edge, quickly passing through the streets of a village before covering homes as well. Soon the villages disappears entirely.
We were to be taken to the active crater. That was part of our deal. Too steep to climb by jeep, the five of us begin the short hike, but immediately being choking. The air is thick with sulfur. A toxic yellow goo oozes from the ground, the liquefied form of the chemical. I wrap a bandana around my mouth and nose. I face away from the rim of the crater as even invisible particles sting my eyes and skin. Acid rain, I think. Nobody was told this tiny, hazardous detail. A long line of hacking foreigners trudging along this incline, climbing step by step like senseless lemmings eager to peer into a toxic spout. Tiny canals wind down the slope. This is what the moon must look like. Inside the crater, a deep ravine is filled with this same toxic yellow ooze. The white mist flows profusely from this crack.
I walk around the edge of the crater, past the tourists, past a sign that may have forbidden my exploration. But it wasn’t in English. One tiny slip would mean melting in the acid. Would I melt? Or suffocate first? Would my skin peel off to reveal a tortured skeleton, jaw slacked open in its final scream? Would tourists take pictures on their digital cameras and review it on their way down, still hacking and coughing?
It wasn’t only for curiosity’s sake that I ventured farther than I should have. I had to pee and had been holding it for hours. So I did it. Right in there.
What relief. Was this the first sense of relief in nearly 24 hours? The endless bus ride, the negotiations, waking up to freeze inside a small jeep, the acid in my eyes and throat. Relief. And then a slow, deep breath on the edge as my toxic yellow liquid slowly joined the crater’s.
Trekking through Northern Thailand
(Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand 11:58.9.5.2004)
I slide the raw piece of liver down my mouth, thankful I was hungry enough to gobble anything anyone deemed edible. "Anyone" in this case is a group of men from the Karen tribe of northern Thailand. I am sitting Buddhist style (way different from the Indian) in small hut, elevated a good 8 feet from the ground by stilts. Dogs, pigs and children scurry beneath the floorboards. The adults are inside, completing a ritual to bless an old couple. In a tradition founded in animism (a belief system in which all natural things possess a spirit) but also informed by Buddhism, the old couple's wrists are wrapped in white thread by the villagers. Once a year, everybody in the village has their wrists wrapped in this way. One woman comes in, takes a pre-cut string, drapes it over the small collection of food and drinks -- presumably to lasso its curative properties -- and proceeds to wrap it around the wrists of the elders. Each time the string goes around the wrist, she issues standard benedictions: here's to having a long, prosperous life; to warding off evil spirits, etc.
Central to this ceremony is alcohol. Each visitor is welcomed by a round of shots. First of their home made whiskey chased closely by a shot of store-bought whiskey. That one, which is actually rum, is quite smooth. I indulge, in deference to their customs and secretly hope the alcohol neutralizes the bacteria I've swallowed from the liver which I imagine to be quickly marching down to my heart and stomach.
This village is one of a few stops during a trek in a small region just outside Chiang Mai, one of Thailand's biggest cities. A trek is not exactly hiking and not exactly going to a museum or buying trinkets from small village girls. Responsible, conscientious trekking allows tourists and travellers a peek and quick immersion to village life. A day consists of a few hours of moderate walking through the jungle, past streams, occasionally evading scorpions and water snakes. Nights are spent in huts of villages, where local meals are prepared and where you're welcome to roam around to chase pigs. Accomodations are spartan, and standards of hygeniene are relaxed. Running water may or may not be available. Conversations with villagers range from the encroachment of the government onto ancestral lands, the dilemmas and conflicts with Catholic and Christian missionaries and attitude towards tourists like me. Apparently, one village has refused to be part of this trek because the visitors smell awful with their perfumes and deodorants and mosquito sprays and shampoos. Why would a village participate? Well, trekkers buy their food and drinks. A few extra bucks can make a difference to a family, especially during the dry season, before planting has begun and a long 7 months away from harvesting their crops.
With me is a group of 9 travellers. One just came back from a 16 day trek through Nepal, while one has never been without A/C in all of Thailand. The only other American notices that a ball woven from leaves retails for $38 at the Pottery Barn and a woman from Tasmania will not eat meat unless she knows how it was raised and killed. It's a patchwork of experience and accents. And the tacit goal is to get to know each other and possibly, get along. The beauty of treks is that there is always a common enemy to unify hitherto unfamiliar strangers. Complaining over the steepness and length of a hill -- that's a good way to bond. The heat. The squat toilets. When the South African accidentally steps on a colony of wasps and everybody panics. That's a good one too. When I nearly fall off a raft. My favorite way to bond is over a hot meal of Thai curry, enjoyed in candlelight during a rain storm. People loosen up, the drinks come out. And it becomes abundantly clear that all travellers are sarcastic alcoholics. Nothing signals love and affection like caustic insults.
Despite the team spirit, I was the only one to accept that piece of liver. This is because I was genuinely curious about its taste, but also because I thought somebody should accept the invitation. Surprisingly, the meat is quite good. Covered in hot spices. There is a mound of rice, a puree of raw, bloody meat and also the cranium of a pig they had just slaughtered for the occasion. Funny how the dental structure resembles a human's. Funnier still the insistence of a young girl to scrape meat out of the nasal cavity. Oh wait, now she's going for the eye socket.
More villagers come, more drinks all around. I limit myself: Hunger and compromised sobriety do not mix well in this kind of village.
Just a couple hours later from the whiskey and the liver, I'm holding a rifle, and stupidly placing my right eyeball a bit too close to where the piece that resembles a hammer violently pounds a layer of gunpowder. Obviously, I've never shot a gun before, but a hunter walked by and asked if anybody was interested. So why not.
The gun is old skool, I could tell. Maybe of the Civil War era. Maybe a musket, because the hunter jammed a long rod down its barrel to load it. The thing with the hammer is that you're not supposed to tinker with it. The thing with this hunter is that his english wasn't very good and his expository hand gestures did little to instruct. I keep pulling the hammer back and it keeps loosening itself -- gently hitting the gunpowder. I'm clearly not cognizant of the danger but the man -- who'd since distanced himself behind me -- rushed back, making quick scratches with his sandals. "No, no, no..." OK fine. I won't touch it.
"Just trigger!." OK! He pulled the hammer back one final time.
A good 45 feet away, he had set up a Sprite can. My goal was not to hit the can, but to fire in its very general direction. If the bullet didn't make a u-turn and fly behind me -- injuring the hunter or blinding one of my fellow trekkers -- it would be a success. The South African tells says prepare for to be pushed back by the rifle. The New Zealander says place one knee on the ground to stabilize myself. At this point I just want to get it over with.
The shot is loud, and I am deaf in my right ear for a few seconds. I didn't feel a recoil at all, but too bad the can didn't topple over or explode triumphantly in shards. "Well Jose, it looks like you got a tree over there." Nobody is hurt, or bleeding, so it's a success. The hunter retrieves the Sprite can and walks back. The can was hit at the very bottom, but was so securely placed that it didn't fall off. I did hit the target. While there were no wild soda cans to shoot during the remainder of the trek -- boy they should just count their lucky stars -- I'm taking up aluminum can hunting when I get back home.
(Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand 11:58.9.5.2004)
I slide the raw piece of liver down my mouth, thankful I was hungry enough to gobble anything anyone deemed edible. "Anyone" in this case is a group of men from the Karen tribe of northern Thailand. I am sitting Buddhist style (way different from the Indian) in small hut, elevated a good 8 feet from the ground by stilts. Dogs, pigs and children scurry beneath the floorboards. The adults are inside, completing a ritual to bless an old couple. In a tradition founded in animism (a belief system in which all natural things possess a spirit) but also informed by Buddhism, the old couple's wrists are wrapped in white thread by the villagers. Once a year, everybody in the village has their wrists wrapped in this way. One woman comes in, takes a pre-cut string, drapes it over the small collection of food and drinks -- presumably to lasso its curative properties -- and proceeds to wrap it around the wrists of the elders. Each time the string goes around the wrist, she issues standard benedictions: here's to having a long, prosperous life; to warding off evil spirits, etc.
Central to this ceremony is alcohol. Each visitor is welcomed by a round of shots. First of their home made whiskey chased closely by a shot of store-bought whiskey. That one, which is actually rum, is quite smooth. I indulge, in deference to their customs and secretly hope the alcohol neutralizes the bacteria I've swallowed from the liver which I imagine to be quickly marching down to my heart and stomach.
This village is one of a few stops during a trek in a small region just outside Chiang Mai, one of Thailand's biggest cities. A trek is not exactly hiking and not exactly going to a museum or buying trinkets from small village girls. Responsible, conscientious trekking allows tourists and travellers a peek and quick immersion to village life. A day consists of a few hours of moderate walking through the jungle, past streams, occasionally evading scorpions and water snakes. Nights are spent in huts of villages, where local meals are prepared and where you're welcome to roam around to chase pigs. Accomodations are spartan, and standards of hygeniene are relaxed. Running water may or may not be available. Conversations with villagers range from the encroachment of the government onto ancestral lands, the dilemmas and conflicts with Catholic and Christian missionaries and attitude towards tourists like me. Apparently, one village has refused to be part of this trek because the visitors smell awful with their perfumes and deodorants and mosquito sprays and shampoos. Why would a village participate? Well, trekkers buy their food and drinks. A few extra bucks can make a difference to a family, especially during the dry season, before planting has begun and a long 7 months away from harvesting their crops.
With me is a group of 9 travellers. One just came back from a 16 day trek through Nepal, while one has never been without A/C in all of Thailand. The only other American notices that a ball woven from leaves retails for $38 at the Pottery Barn and a woman from Tasmania will not eat meat unless she knows how it was raised and killed. It's a patchwork of experience and accents. And the tacit goal is to get to know each other and possibly, get along. The beauty of treks is that there is always a common enemy to unify hitherto unfamiliar strangers. Complaining over the steepness and length of a hill -- that's a good way to bond. The heat. The squat toilets. When the South African accidentally steps on a colony of wasps and everybody panics. That's a good one too. When I nearly fall off a raft. My favorite way to bond is over a hot meal of Thai curry, enjoyed in candlelight during a rain storm. People loosen up, the drinks come out. And it becomes abundantly clear that all travellers are sarcastic alcoholics. Nothing signals love and affection like caustic insults.
Despite the team spirit, I was the only one to accept that piece of liver. This is because I was genuinely curious about its taste, but also because I thought somebody should accept the invitation. Surprisingly, the meat is quite good. Covered in hot spices. There is a mound of rice, a puree of raw, bloody meat and also the cranium of a pig they had just slaughtered for the occasion. Funny how the dental structure resembles a human's. Funnier still the insistence of a young girl to scrape meat out of the nasal cavity. Oh wait, now she's going for the eye socket.
More villagers come, more drinks all around. I limit myself: Hunger and compromised sobriety do not mix well in this kind of village.
Just a couple hours later from the whiskey and the liver, I'm holding a rifle, and stupidly placing my right eyeball a bit too close to where the piece that resembles a hammer violently pounds a layer of gunpowder. Obviously, I've never shot a gun before, but a hunter walked by and asked if anybody was interested. So why not.
The gun is old skool, I could tell. Maybe of the Civil War era. Maybe a musket, because the hunter jammed a long rod down its barrel to load it. The thing with the hammer is that you're not supposed to tinker with it. The thing with this hunter is that his english wasn't very good and his expository hand gestures did little to instruct. I keep pulling the hammer back and it keeps loosening itself -- gently hitting the gunpowder. I'm clearly not cognizant of the danger but the man -- who'd since distanced himself behind me -- rushed back, making quick scratches with his sandals. "No, no, no..." OK fine. I won't touch it.
"Just trigger!." OK! He pulled the hammer back one final time.
A good 45 feet away, he had set up a Sprite can. My goal was not to hit the can, but to fire in its very general direction. If the bullet didn't make a u-turn and fly behind me -- injuring the hunter or blinding one of my fellow trekkers -- it would be a success. The South African tells says prepare for to be pushed back by the rifle. The New Zealander says place one knee on the ground to stabilize myself. At this point I just want to get it over with.
The shot is loud, and I am deaf in my right ear for a few seconds. I didn't feel a recoil at all, but too bad the can didn't topple over or explode triumphantly in shards. "Well Jose, it looks like you got a tree over there." Nobody is hurt, or bleeding, so it's a success. The hunter retrieves the Sprite can and walks back. The can was hit at the very bottom, but was so securely placed that it didn't fall off. I did hit the target. While there were no wild soda cans to shoot during the remainder of the trek -- boy they should just count their lucky stars -- I'm taking up aluminum can hunting when I get back home.
